


The Honeypot Affair

by Rev (Ballyhoo)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Amputation, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Cigarettes, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Injury, Martillo Family, Supernatural Elements, Telepathy, Violence, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 01:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10776672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ballyhoo/pseuds/Rev
Summary: Those of good faith want nothing more than to dismiss the honeypot incident at the Alveare as the result of an innocent mistake. Maiza was simply an unfortunate random victim, no more, no less. They are forced to revise their opinion when Maiza is gunned down in broad daylight later that day.In which Maiza is targeted repeatedly by unknown assailants, and the Martillos close ranks and prepare to mete down Camorra vengeance.





	1. The Honeypot

Maiza only noticed that something was wrong once he finished his third cup of tea.

The sweat soaking through his shirt collar hadn’t concerned him – the Alveare was abnormally warm today – but the _shivering_ did. He couldn’t _stop_ shivering, and he carefully returned his cup and saucer to the bar counter when he realized he no longer had full control over his hands. It was a good thing he’d done so, for nausea immediately crashed over him in a wave, intense and dizzying.

He anchored himself by leaning against the counter, trying to breathe as deeply as he could without triggering the roiling of his stomach any further than the unpleasant level it had already reached. There were few things that could make immortals feel the way he was feeling now, and he had to stay calm if he wanted to figure out why exactly he had an awful urge to vomit. _…Poison? If poison, from what? The tea?_

But Ennis and Randy toward the end of the counter had been drinking the same tea as he had without adverse effects. _So then…?_ The back wall of the Alveare swam in front of him, and he clenched his trembling hands and forced himself to focus. If he’d fallen ill from poison, he had to identify its source before more people could suffer…and before he potentially passed out.

Still, if it wasn’t the tea, then what? He hadn’t ingested anything else, had he? His gaze fell on Pezzo two seats down to his left, reaching over for a small honeypot near the opposite edge of the counter. 

_Oh._

“Pezzzoo,” he slurred, sliding off the barstool to clumsily stand on his own two feet, supporting himself by keeping a hand on the counter. “Don’t. I’ll…take that off your hands. Where’s Lia? Lia?”

Lia hurried down the aisle behind the counter at the sound of her name. “What is it?” she asked, and he could make out her blurry eyebrows creasing in shock. “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah, is something wrong, Maiza? You don’t look too good,” chimed Pezzo, and Firo leaned backward from his seat on Pezzo’s left side to throw in a “Maiza?” with palpable concern in his voice.

Maiza ignored them both. “Please, I need a towel,” he said to Lia, and then he lunged forth and snatched the honeypot from Pezzo in one smooth movement and immediately flung it down to the floor. The container smashed into pieces upon contact, and the conversation from nearby diners ceased. _Unnecessary…could have just taken it from him._ But rational, sober thought wasn’t easy to follow when he could barely keep himself upright. 

A towel was pressed into his hand, and Maiza crouched down and draped it over the honey-drenched mess on the floor. “Ronny?” he called. Tried to stand. Failed. 

“I’m here,” Ronny said, close to Maiza’s right side. He’d been on the opposite end of the restaurant only seconds ago. “What’s the matter, Maiza?”

 _You tell me._ Maiza swallowed painfully, wobbling on his feet. When Ronny offered his arm to him, he took it, and rose with his friend’s assistance. “I need you to…take care of this.” He gestured to the towel. “There’s been…an accident.” 

His head pounded, and he swayed, swayed – but Ronny’s strong and steady arm kept him grounded. Kept him from falling. _What…what comes next? If that honey’s been tainted, then is everything honey-based in the kitchen compromised? No, it’s a new pot. New batch._ “Lia,” he mumbled, “Lia, that _was_ honey from this morning’s shipment, yes?”

“Y-yes.”

“Have you opened any other jars? Was this the only opened new honey today?”

Lia fell silent, thinking it over. Finally, she said, “I think so. We didn’t really need it, since we had enough old stock in the kitchen.”

The ensuing relief that swept over Maiza wasn’t enough to quell the dizziness that had overcome him, but it was a desperate comfort nonetheless. “Good. I don’t know if the rest of it's untrustworthy, but don’t open any more of it, just in case. We’ll have to test the honey…la-later.” Bile surged upward in his throat, and he groaned, sweat dripping down his face. “Ronny, the mess – _please_ –”

Someone took hold of his left arm so that Ronny could relinquish him. “I’ve got you, dear,” Seina said, and she patted his arm. “Come, I’ll help you to the kitchen.”

“Wait, Seina.” He squinted at Ronny, who knelt down next to him by the honey-soaked towel and nimbly plucked the towel up and away from the floorboards. Maiza exhaled the breath he’d been holding once he confirmed the complete absence of honey or glass underneath it. Ronny stood, angled his back toward the dining tables, and shook the towel out with both hands. It disappeared as soon as Maiza blinked.

Maiza fought against the rising bile, and found himself depending on Seina’s support more than he’d meant to. “All right, let’s…go.”

Seina hooked her arm under Maiza’s, and Ronny did the same on his other side. “You’re burning up, you know,” she whispered, and it was all Maiza could do to nod loosely at her in response. Behind him he could hear the concerned chatter of Firo, Randy, Pezzo, and Ennis, whom he assumed had every intention of following him into the kitchen. 

“You four stay here,” he said, raising his voice. “Calm the customers. Reassure them. This incident will undoubtedly have caused them to worry. Make sure no-one touches my cup." 

“But, Maiza—!”

“I’ll be _fine_ , Firo,” he said, unable to keep a slightly ragged edge from his tone. His stomach churned. “Seina, Ronny, thank you.”

Both of them took the hint, and the three of them laboriously made their way down and around the counter and through the kitchen door, where Lia awaited them with a chair – and, thoughtfully, a bucket. Maiza made for the chair, but his legs gave way and his knees slammed into the kitchen floor tiles. He retched as soon as he drew the bucket toward him, one forearm on the seat of the chair and his other hand gripping the bucket’s side. As soon as he’d emptied his stomach he slumped onto his side, his cheek meeting the cool tiles and his eyes closing upon contact.

He lost consciousness almost instantly.

❖ 

Maiza woke to cool water droplets running down his face. Something wet and rough had been laid over his forehead, which he took to be a washcloth. The kitchen’s ceiling lights greeted him when he opened his eyes, but were thankfully blocked when Firo leaned over him with his hands on his knees.

“Maiza’s awake!” he exclaimed, and seconds later Lia appeared beside him with a glass of water in hand. Firo moved aside so that she could kneel down and offer it to Maiza.

He pushed himself up so that he could take the glass, gradually becoming more aware of his circumstances. His tie was missing, and someone had undone the first two buttons of his shirt collar. “Thank you, Lia,” he said, grateful for something to drink. His tongue had turned to sandpaper. “How long was I out?”

“Not too long,” said Ronny, and Maiza turned and looked up to see his old friend standing on his left side. A little embarrassed that he was the only one sitting on the floor, Maiza used the chair beside him as support as he got to his feet and waved away Lia and Firo hovering anxiously nearby.

“I’m fine, don’t worry yourselves. Now, Ronny, about the honey…”

Ronny narrowed his eyes, and gestured over to where several crates of honey from the morning shipment had been stacked on a table. “No one’s touched it. I examined the opened honey while you were indisposed – it’s rhododendron honey. You had three cups of tea over the course of an hour, all of which you’d flavored with the poisoned honey…I wonder. Perhaps something may have been done to your teacup as well.”

 _Is that so..._  Maiza pursed his lips. “The question is whether or not the poisoning was deliberate…it could have been that the beekeepers didn’t know what flowers their bees had been visiting. But if not...and if the entire batch is tainted…well. It’s a good thing that I was the only one affected. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened had we served food and drink made with poisoned honey to our customers.” So saying, he eased himself into the chair and patted his pockets. Frowning, he asked, “Ronny, where _is_ my tie?”

“Here, Maiza.” It was Firo who had it, clutched tightly in his left hand and woven around his fingers. He held it out to Maiza with his brows knitted. “Are you feeling okay? I mean…we’re immortal, but I dunno much about how poison affects us. You looked completely out of it, back by the bar.”

Maiza gave his protégé a reassuring smile. “I really am fine, Firo, you have my word. My blood pressure is still a little low, and the nausea hasn’t entirely left me, but I think the fever’s gone.”

“If you ask me,” huffed Seina, having just come into the kitchen, “ _I_ think you should go home early and sleep it off. Randy and the others can take care of things here. And since you didn’t ask me, I’ll tell you that you’ve got orders straight from the Don to go home and take it easy for today.”

 “Molsa said that…?” Maiza shook his head, having finished fixing his tie. He rebuttoned his collar, and stood once more. “Well, I won’t argue with him this time. I’m sure you can handle things here without me.” Ronny helped him into his coat, and with his hat in one hand Maiza used his other to pat Firo on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Firo, all right? Stay here and follow Ronny’s instructions.” To Lia, he said, “I _am_ sorry for all the trouble you and Seina have had today – I’m afraid we rather took over the kitchen for a while.”

Seina snorted. “Ha! Don’t underestimate the staff – as if one man lying down on the floor would get in the way of our work.”

Maiza laughed sheepishly, and after thanking her again left the kitchen and made for the door leading to the honey shop. Ronny caught up with him as he passed the bar counter, which Maiza was thankful for – it gave him an excuse to ignore the curious, worried stares of Randy, Pezzo, and Ennis several yards away.

“Well, Maiza…” Ronny began, “I’ll have you know that I did not enjoy seeing you in such discomfort. Had I realized the honey was poisoned in time, I would have warned you accordingly. It was an embarrassing oversight.”

“It’s not as if you know the future, Ronny,” Maiza replied, shrugging his shoulders. “And of course, I would never hold my own discomfort against you. But…I _am_ concerned that the patrons’ lives may have been at risk. I want to think the best of the situation, that it was a mistake on the part of a well-meaning beekeeper…but of course, we must consider the more unsavory alternative. If poisoned honey was deliberately sent to us, then it’s quite an indiscriminate murder method, don’t you think? No control over whom it affects at all.” 

He grimaced, put on his hat, and reached for the door handle. Ronny stepped back, and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “The Family will investigate this incident thoroughly. Enjoy your day off, _contaiuolo_.”

Maiza grinned and opened the door to the honey shop, breathing in air permeated with the thick taste and smell of sugar. “I’ll try.”

❖

Maiza’s apartment was located on the outskirts of Little Italy, and he spent much of the walk home deep in thought. There were too many unknowns, too many vague uncertainties about the honey poisoning incident for him to make sense of things. If it _had_ been a murder attempt, than the method would imply that the perpetrator didn’t have a particular target in mind. That…or the perpetrator had a target but didn’t particularly care as to the human collateral damage. Or that they’d planned on taking out a large portion of the Alveare’s customers and the Martillos right from the start.

 _Poisoned honey. The perfect method._ It was a perfect method, wasn’t it? It didn’t take much digging to know that the Alveare’s specialty lay in honey-based liquor and food, and heavily relied on honey shipments to support its business. _Perfect method indeed._ How clever the method was – no one suspected it, and it was guaranteed to work at least once _and_ affect as many people who’d consumed the honey at any point.

How clever.

How…easy.

_Thank goodness only I ate it._

Maiza rounded the corner, three blocks away from his apartment. Faint guilt gnawed at his insides over having left his comrades to pick up the work left in his absence, but he couldn’t deny the way that fatigue had clung to his limbs ever since he’d woken up on the kitchen floor. It was only two in the afternoon, but the prospect of sleep _did_  tempt him.

A car screeched to a halt a few feet away from the pavement curb. Its windows immediately rolled down, and behind them several young men raised their guns and pointed them in Maiza's direction. Just before they opened fire, Maiza spied an elderly man sitting in the car’s backseat.

Then there was pain.

He fell to his knees as soon as the bullets hit him – in his legs, his arms, his torso. As he collapsed forward he brought up his forearms to brace himself against the sidewalk, and peered upward with fading vision to see a small black object hurtling out of one of the windows in an arc above him. It clattered to the pavement somewhere behind him and went off in a blaze of smoke and heat and pain which engulfed Maiza’s legs and hips and he closed his eyes and surrendered to death before he could suffer any further.

❖

Maiza woke for the second time that day on the ground, only this time he lay on his stomach and not his side. Phantom hurts from countless bullet holes tingled across his body, but it paled in comparison to the horrific pain rupturing down the length of his right leg. He inhaled a stuttering breath, and pushed against the pavement with his hands in an effort to raise his upper body somewhat – only to hiss at several little hard _somethings_ burrowing into his palm. Upon lifting his hand, he found several crushed bullets scattered across the pavement. _Must have come straight from my own body._  

Gritting his teeth, he twisted up and back so that he could catch a glimpse of his right leg. What was left of his right leg. It ended just a few inches below his right knee, and he could make out the broken, jagged ends of his tibia and fibula under mangled muscle and blood that had yet to rescind into his body. A familiar sense of nausea swept over him, and he faced forward to steady his breathing. It was then that he noticed a telephone box several yards ahead of him.

_Have to tell…the others._

With his forearms and left leg he dragged himself inch by inch across the pavement, reaching for his bullet-ridden hat in the process. It was an inefficient method of moving – slow and painful and _slow_ , and he stopped to look back at his leg to see if any progress had been made. Bits and pieces of flesh were reforming incrementally across the pavement in a gruesome trail behind him, bone fragments jittering across his skin from where they’d imbedded themselves earlier.

_Damn._

Maiza hung his head low and clenched his fists. The box seemed so far away, and his leg was regenerating at a frustratingly slow pace. Pain muddled his thoughts – it was far easier to lay still and focus on breathing instead of moving. Police sirens blared in the distance along with the frightened screams of unfortunate passersby. _No. Have to move. Have to do something._

A belated solution struck him. He sighed, inwardly cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner.

_Ronny? We have a problem._

Footsteps from somewhere behind him belied a visitor. A pair of shiny black oxfords came to a stop on Maiza’s left side, and he looked up to see a welcome, familiar sight.

“Yes,” murmured Ronny, a troubled expression darkening his face. “I believe we do.”


	2. The Dart

As soon as his calcaneus slotted into place, Maiza stood with Ronny’s help and gingerly put weight on his bare foot. His leg was completely bare from the knee down, but Maiza was far too preoccupied to bother with trivial matters like embarrassment and how his leg had yet to fully regain feeling.

“Ronny,” he asked, urgently, “Has the Alveare been hit? Are the others safe?”

Ronny briefly closed his eyes, and then nodded. “The Family is safe. No one else has been hit – not yet, at least.”

 _Good_. Maiza tightened his grip on Ronny’s shoulder. “Then let’s go back and warn them. First the honey, and now this… There’s no time to waste.”

Ronny’s eyes flashed, and when he raised his left hand he was holding Maiza’s right shoe, perfectly intact. “Are you sure you want to show up clad in only one shoe? I could fix your trouser leg, you know. Your suit too, of course. It would be trivial.”

Impatiently, Maiza snatched his shoe from Ronny’s grasp and put in on, using Ronny for balance. “That’s unimportant right now. I don’t want to waste any more time than we already have.”

“If you say so,” Ronny sighed. As soon as Maiza had finished with his shoe, Ronny hooked his right arm under Maiza’s left and said, “Walk with me.”

They stepped forward, and with the next step their surroundings shifted from a minor Little Italy street to the back alley behind the Alveare, and pavement turned to stone underneath Maiza’s feet. Maiza let go of Ronny and darted for the staircase that led to the downstairs cellar and the Martillos’ meeting room.

“I _told_ you that no harm has befallen the others,” Ronny noted, at Maiza’s back. “You’re in such a rush… Well, no matter.”

Maiza’s shoulders tensed as he opened the cellar door, and then they relaxed. “I know. I can’t help myself from worrying all the same. Harm notwithstanding, everyone needs to be on guard as soon as possible. We don’t know what we’re up against.”

The two of them moved through the cellar, and found a few of their capos engaged in hushed conversation upon entering the downstairs meeting room.

“Ah, Ronny,” said the nearest executive, turning to face the doorway. “And…Maiza! What is this?”

All eyes immediately turned to Maiza at the shock in the capo’s voice. Maiza supposed he probably looked a sight, with his bullet-ridden clothes and half his trouser leg missing. _Perhaps I should have let Ronny fix it up after all._

“Firo and the others are still upstairs,” Ronny informed him. “I’ll fetch them. The Don and Yaguruma are in the office.”

The first capo who’d spoken nodded, tacitly volunteering to go update Molsa and Yaguruma of the situation. It was abundantly clear that there _was_ a situation – what else could you call the _contaiuolo_ showing up with his suit full of bullet holes if not that?

After Ronny and the first capo had gone, the other executives drew closer to Maiza with restrained concern in their eyes and questioning expressions. Had they been associates, they undoubtedly would have crowded around Maiza and blurted out those questions one after the other – but they were not, and Maiza was thankful for that. The sound of machine-gun fire still echoed in his ears; he would rather not have to deal with such clamors.

The trapdoor in the ceiling opened, and Firo dashed down the stairs – only to leap over the bannister on the fifth step, too impatient to descend them all the way. “Maiza!” he cried, butting his way past the other executives to get a good look at his friend. He paled immediately as soon as he took stock of Maiza’s clothing, and his eyes widened upon spotting the unusual state of Maiza’s trouser leg.

“Maiza,” he repeated, fists clenched at his sides, “…What happened?”

“What do you think?” Maiza asked, but the purposeful brevity in his voice failed to lighten the mood. “Once everybody’s here, we’ll have a proper discussion.” 

The trapdoor opened again, this time to reveal Ennis, Randy, and Pezzo. Ronny brought up the group’s rear, and as Randy and Pezzo descended the stairs they shouted out various indignant cries over Maiza’s condition.

“Who’s the bastard responsible for this, Maiza?”

“They won’t get away with this, the lousy rats!”

“Gentlemen, please,” Maiza implored, raising his hands for silence. “Let’s all try to keep our heads. It won’t do to lose them here.” 

When Molsa and Yaguruma arrived, Molsa took one look at Maiza and said to the capo accompanying him, “I see what you mean.” He waved away the executives’ respectful greetings and took a seat on the other side of the round table in the middle of the room. “Well, Maiza, let’s not beat around the bush. We’ve all been informed of today’s incident with the honey, but this…”

Maiza straightened his posture at Molsa’s attention. “It happened just a few minutes ago. I was on my way home when a car drove by and its occupants gunned me down. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything useful about their appearances - all I could make out were that the perpetrators were young men, with a far older man accompanying them. They flung some sort of bomb behind me as a farewell gift. There was no sign of them when I came to.”

Molsa wove his fingers together in front of him, the wrinkles on his face deepening as he considered Maiza’s report. “Not much to go on. I would venture to say that your hit-and-run is connected to the poisoned honey, but we can’t know for certain. Not yet, at any rate. We don’t know who these people are, or what they’re after.”

“Do you think they're targeting Maiza?” Firo asked, his face still deathly white. “After all, he was the only one who got sick. And as far as we know, no one else in the Family’s been hit.”

Behind Molsa, Yaguruma harrumphed and folded his arms. “If they are after Maiza, or if they aren’t – either way, it’s a direct challenge to the Family, and one we will not stand for.”

Molsa leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking under him. “Yaguruma, I want you to round up the associates later today and have them go on alert. Organize a few patrols, see if they can’t ask around for information on those tommy-toting upstarts. I’ll leave the associates in your hands alone.”

“Of course.”

“Now Maiza,” Molsa continued, meeting Maiza’s gaze, “What do _you_ plan to do?”

“Nothing.” Maiza turned his hat over and over in his hands. “I’ll act the same as always.”

Firo took a step forward, unable to stop himself from interrupting. “But, Maiza—!”

Maiza silenced him with a shake of his head. “How else can we proceed? The only way to know for sure if these men are after me is to wait it out. I won’t have any escorts, any guards. All we can do is see where and at whom they strike next, and gather information in the meantime. Which means I don’t want anybody doing anything reckless.” He narrowed his eyes. “Understand?”

Firo bit his lip. “Understood.”

Molsa cleared his throat, and Firo and Maiza turned to give him their attention. “If that’s what you want, Maiza, then I have no qualms. But I can’t condone total passivity from you, understand? Don’t allow the situation to grow into something unmanageable for you.” 

Maiza’s hands stilled. “I’ll do my best.”

Molsa nodded, and stood. “That’s the end of it, then.”

With the meeting thus concluded, and with Molsa returned to his office, the executives immediately fell into talking while Yaguruma went upstairs to round up the associates dawdling in the restaurant. Unable to tear his eyes away from Firo – who was now quietly conversing with Ennis – Maiza leaned in close to Ronny and murmured, “He reacted rather strongly to the situation, don’t you think? It’s not as if I haven’t been shot before…” 

Ronny gave him a level look. “Precisely. You _have_ been shot.”

“…I don’t follow.”

“It’s not the first time he’s seen you in such a state,” Ronny said gently, and a memory that was not Maiza’s own flashed to the forefront of his mind – a capo’s memory, of him diving in front of Szilard’s machine gun while Firo ran, and another of him standing in the back alley in bullet hole-ridden clothing. It was a little disconcerting to watch himself from another person’s perspective, and Maiza frowned at his friend.

“Don’t do that again without warning me first. But…I see what you’re getting at, I think. I suppose I should have a talk with him.”

“Perhaps.” Ronny shrugged, and then gave Maiza a sly smile. “You should have, by the way.”

Maiza furrowed his brows. “Should have what?”

“Let me fix your suit, I mean.”

 _Mind-reading rascal._ “It doesn’t matter, now,” Maiza replied, embarrassed. “And I have the means to replace the outfit, as it were.”

The look Ronny gave him was positively arch. “You can’t possibly be suggesting that you plan on returning home as you _are_ , can you?”

“…You have a point.”

“I often do,” Ronny agreed, and with a snap of his fingers the holes in Maiza’s suit repaired themselves, his trouser legs lengthened, and a sock reappeared over his right foot. “Better?”

Maiza gave his clothes a cursory once-over, and nodded sheepishly. “As if I could say otherwise.”

“Of course you couldn’t. Now, I’ve got to go retrieve the rest of the associates for Yaguruma, so I’ll leave Firo in your hands.” Ronny turned to face the stairs. “Take care.”

_I’ll try._

 

No trouble greeted Maiza on his way home, and he slept through the night sans interruptions. Still, he kept an alert eye and ear out for it as he set out to work the next day, prepared to act should he spy a shadow or two from an upcoming alleyway, or another car hurtling down the street.

What he _hadn’t_ anticipated was Ronny calling his name from one of those alleyways. 

“Maiza – over here, Maiza. Look up.”

 _Look…up?_ Puzzled, Maiza stood at the entrance of the alleyway and raised his head.

Ronny stood _on_ the opposite wall, next to a third story window and perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Momentarily at a loss for words, Maiza inched closer and tried to recover as best he could. “Ronny…what on _earth_ are you doing?”

“I couldn’t help but keep an eye on you,” Ronny admitted, a lit cigarette appearing between his fingers. He took a drag from it, and a few flecks of ash fluttered down a few inches away from Maiza’s face. “Take a look at this.”

Ronny knelt next to the window and reached inside it, pulling up an unconscious man by his shirt collar. “He took one look at me standing outside his window and passed out,” he remarked, and with one tug he removed some sort of sniper rifle from the man’s grip so that he could show it off to Maiza. “A rather amateurish reaction for someone playing the role of a sniper, no? It seems that he intended to shoot you with a paralytic agent. A potent one, too.”

“Paralytic?” That was new. That was utterly different from a bullet – depending on where he was shot, and how many bullets, Maiza could regenerate somewhat quickly. He wasn’t sure exactly how his immortal body would handle a paralytic agent, but the salient issue here was the shift in the shooter’s intent (assuming that he was affiliated with those behind the honeypot and shooting incidents).

Using a paralytic agent meant _capture, not kill_. You didn’t blow down a man with tommy guns if you didn’t want to kill him. And you didn’t shoot a man with a paralytic agent if you didn’t want to capture him without a struggle (or, he supposed, put one out of commission for a while). But if whomever these men were wanted to capture him, then why didn’t they simply scoop him off the pavement yesterday after gunning him down? To see how fast it took him to regenerate?

“Your mind is as sharp as ever, I see,” Ronny said. Startled from his thoughts, Maiza looked upward once more to see his friend walking down the wall toward him. “At any rate, I’d venture to say that this proves whomever’s behind this is after _you_ specifically – and I’d have said that even if I _hadn’t_ read the other man’s mind. Unfortunately, that’s about the only useful information anybody’s going to glean from him.”

Ronny stepped off the wall and onto the ground, taking one last drag of his cigarette. It winked out of existence with his next exhale of smoke.

“He was, shall we say, _very indirectly_ ordered to shoot you, without being told what for or who you were. The orders were passed down some sort of chain of command, since the man who gave him the orders apparently had no idea why you needed to be shot in the first place, nor what would happen to you afterwards. If the purpose _was_ to capture you like you hypothesized, then your would-be collectors might be nearby—”

“Ronny!” Maiza held up his hands in a beseeching effort to get Ronny to _shut up_ for one second of his life. Ronny did so begrudgingly. “Ronny, I appreciate your efforts, but you do realize that you’re getting in my way, don’t you?”

Ronny blinked owlishly at him, a little ruffled. “And _you_ realize that my abilities would make figuring out who’s responsible a far easier task than you seem to think it ought to be, surely.”

Maiza gave the _chiamatore_ a patient, strained smile. “Be that as it may, I would rather you refrain from interfering for the time being. You stepped in today with the best of intentions, I’m sure, but I think it would be more fruitful plan of action if I dealt with these pursuers directly on my own, at least at first. After all, they appear to be after _me,_ so the best way to attract them would be to move on my own.”

“…If I hadn’t been here, you would have been shot,” Ronny countered, waspish.

“And possibly captured, I know,” Maiza acknowledged. “I just don’t see that as a worst case scenario, that’s all. In fact, that might be the best way for us to figure out what these men aim to accomplish. So _please_ , don’t act so cavalierly.”

Ronny was silent for a moment. “All right,” he said, finally. “You’re asking me to trust you, and I’ll do my best to respect that. But as a Martillo, I can’t say that I won’t do what I can to protect my fellow camorrista from unnecessary danger.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” Maiza reassured him, and then glanced up toward the window. “But what should we do about the sniper?” 

Ronny tapped the tip of his shoe against the ground, a satisfied expression warming his face. “Since he didn’t know anything, I’ve just now taken the liberty of depositing him on the police department’s front doorstep, along with his rifle. He’s a petty criminal as it is, but I imagine they won’t take kindly to his firearm possession in their vicinity.”

“Ah.”

Maiza and Ronny stared at each other, and broke out into chuckles.

“Well, now,” Ronny coughed, once the humor subsided. “You did say you wanted to move on your own, but would you object to my accompanying you the rest of the way to the office? Just this once.”

Maiza lips twitched into a wry smile. “If it’ll appease you. Just this once.”

The two of them exited the alley and resumed course for the Alveare, tipping their hats to a lady who happened to be passing by. As they walked, Maiza found that he was more pleasantly grateful than anything else that he’d agreed to Ronny accompanying him. 

It was nice, of course, to spend the daily commute to work in the company of a friend, but he had to admit that Ronny’s presence was a reassuring physical reminder of the support he had from his fellow Martillos. Even as the years ticked by, it still astonished him how unbelievably good the Family had been to him, and how they honestly _cared_ for him.

Again, he recalled the memory of Szilard in the Alveare – but it was his own memory now, not the one Ronny had shown him. He’d stood, helpless, bleeding profusely – and the Martillo executives had cried murder and come to his defense, shouting for him to just stay _alive_ while they bore down upon Szilard with guns blazing and hatred in their bones.

 _I don’t deserve them,_ Maiza mused, his grip tightening on his briefcase. _But I have them, nonetheless, and they have me. That poisoned honey could have hurt them – I won’t forgive those responsible. And I won’t stand to see the Family in danger again because someone's after my head. One way or another, I’ll end this._

There was a good chance that Ronny had read his thoughts just now – from the ‘pleasantly grateful’ bit to ‘I don’t deserve them’ – but Maiza decided that he didn’t mind if Ronny had.

_Just this once._


	3. The Saw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for amputation.

Maiza shut the door to his office behind him and smiled at Ronny, who just as he’d expected had been loitering in the otherwise empty hallway outside. 

“I never loiter,” Ronny chided, brushing non-existent dust off his cuff. “Well, Maiza, it’s six-thirty. Are you headed home?”

Unruffled, Maiza met Ronny’s gaze and shrugged lightly. “We’ll see.”

“Coy,” Ronny muttered, and Maiza fought to keep his smile from spreading as he set out at a brisk pace down the hallway. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ronny start a little, his head jerking upward with surprise. He didn’t bother to hide his delight once Ronny caught up with him on his left – why bother to hide what can’t be hidden? – and grinned openly at his friend, demurely adjusting his coat over his arm.

“Scalawag,” Ronny amended, but he didn’t look terribly upset. Maiza chuckled, and made no attempt to defend himself. Instead, he said:

“I’ll hold you to our agreement, then, Ronny.”

“Which one?” Ronny asked, though he must have known the answer. “This morning’s, or this afternoon’s?”

“Both, naturally. But the latter is the one that currently interests me.”

Ronny’s answering sigh was more disinterested than impatient. “My opinion hasn’t changed. Your argument was sensible as it only could have been, and I have no qualms.”

They slowed in unison as they drew closer to the meeting room’s door, and Maiza offered Ronny a grateful duck of his head once they came to a full stop. “Thank you. I never doubted your integrity, but all the same I couldn’t help but seek assurances.” So saying, he unfurled his coat and shrugged it on, fumbling for the buttons while Ronny faced a mirror that had never before existed on the opposite wall and attended to his hair with a comb that he hadn’t been carrying at any point beforehand.

Once they were both suitably ready, Maiza switched his hat to his right hand and reached for the door handle with his left. “Watch out,” warned Ronny, behind him, “I expect they’ll be somewhat clingy.”

Six or seven executives greeted Maiza when he opened the door – more than he normally expected to see at this time of the day - and he winced in understanding. Firo half-sat, half-stood in his seat as soon as Maiza entered the room, hovering anxiously mid-air in indecision. After a moment he made up his mind and stood all the way, unable to fully meet Maiza’s eyes. “You off then, Maiza?”

“That’s right,” Maiza replied – to Firo and the rest of the executives both. “I’m off. Just like always.”

“Just like always…” Firo echoed, his hands flexing at his sides. “…Right.”

The atmosphere of finality pervading the room was wholly unnecessary, Maiza thought, but he doubted there was much he could do to remedy it. Instead, he put on his hat and raised his hand to bid his colleagues good-bye, giving Ronny a nod of thanks when he opened the cellar door for him. Without further ado, Maiza entered the cellar and did not look back at Ronny, nor did he wait for the door to close behind him. Acting as he always did was the most he could do to assuage the others’ trepidation, he figured, and prolonging a good-bye would have inevitably turned it into a farewell.

Maiza exited the cellar and ascended the stairs to the back alley with unhurried movements, deliberately pausing at the top to tug his hat more firmly downward. He set off on his usual route home at a moderate gait, following the normal procedure right up until he turned left when he normally turned right, heading for a larger street instead of the smaller back streets he preferred. When he reached the street in question, he headed down the block in the direction opposite to the more major road it opened onto and stationed himself at the block’s corner. _Some_ cars passed down this street, as did _some_ pedestrians, but not nearly as many as those that used the main road and _that_ was what counted.

Maiza tucked his hands into his coat pockets and waited.

Ten minutes passed.

A large Mercedes-Benz turned off the main road and trundled down the street, glossy black and ostentatious in its newness. It drew the attention of everyone on the street, Maiza’s included, because you didn’t drive a car like that through Little Italy in the middle of the Depression and not expect to make some sort of statement. Maiza narrowed his eyes at the flagrant display, and locked his disdain behind a cool façade.

Its passenger door opened to reveal a young brunet man with a burgundy tie sitting by the opposite window, his revolver trained on Maiza’s head. Maiza raised his arms into the air and remained silent while the man looked him up and down, remained still even when heavy footsteps belied a man approaching him on his right. Kept his head forward and his expression mild as the man patted him down and failed to find the knives Maiza had left at home that morning.

The man must have signaled something to the brunet, who nodded and gestured brusquely at Maiza with his revolver. “Get in.”

Maiza lowered his arms and did as instructed, sliding into the middle seat, raising an eyebrow at the divider isolating them from the driver and front passenger. The other man followed after him, slamming the car door shut. For the first time, Maiza had the chance to actually look at him – he was of stockier build than the man on Maiza’s right, sporting uneven sideburns and bushy eyebrows and a patchy tweed overcoat incongruent with his shiny new brogues. _The muscle of the two_?

Eying the brunet’s revolver, Maiza considered his options, weighed probabilities, and took the plunge. “May I ask what your names are? We may as well become acquainted.”

The brunet man leaned forward to look at his companion, and the stocky man reached into the inside of his coat and pulled out a long, wide hunting knife. Rueful, Maiza sighed and reached his hands upward – and then held his palm out when he saw the brunet tense. “No, no,” he said. “I saw where his eyes strayed. Let’s make this easier for everyone.”

With a frown, the brunet relaxed back into the seat. Maiza proceeded to unbutton the top three buttons of his coat, and then the first two of his shirt collar, his pulse thrumming hot and steady underneath his fingers. He tilted his head back, and the man plunged the knife into his bared throat.

❖

Maiza woke to his own blood bubbling at a gouge in his neck, cool air teasing the space where the knife had once been. He woke to ropes digging into his wrists and shins, bound behind what he assumed to be the back and legs of a chair respectively; he woke to an ache in his shoulders and arms that suggested he had been sitting uncomfortably for some time, without his coat. He opened his eyes to candlelight inches from his face, and flinched instinctively.

The candle withdrew, and once Maiza’s eyes adjusted he saw the brunet staring at him over its flame. Without a word, the brunet began moving the candle slowly from side to side, looking directly into Maiza’s eyes. Catching on, Maiza obediently kept his eyes on the flame – at the very least, it served as a distraction from the last of his skin reknitting.

After a minute or two the brunet extinguished the flame with his fingers, and turned to place the candle on the large, round table behind him – not as large as the Martillos’ meeting table, Maiza thought, but large enough to serve a similar purpose. In fact, the more he took stock of his surroundings the more he was reminded of the Martillos’ meeting room, from the elegant wallpaper (red, not green) to the burnished brass chandelier above the table, and – most importantly – to the spiral stairwell in the corner that led to what could only be a trapdoor.  

“He’s awake,” said the brunet, and only then did Maiza notice an unfamiliar man standing by some sort of refreshment table, telephone receiver in hand. The stranger looked them both over, and muttered something into the receiver before placing it back on its cradle. “Alert too,” the brunet added.

The stranger shook his head and walked around the table to look at Maiza more closely, his murky green eyes filled with pity that sent alarm shooting down Maiza’s spine. “That’s a shame,” he murmured, his voice unexpectedly husky – not deep, but rounded by natural warmth. “Who woke him?” He glanced at the brunet, and then above Maiza’s head. “Wilbur?”

“I wanted my knife back,” Wilbur rumbled, from somewhere behind Maiza – and _his_ was a voice that could move mountains, both the earthquake and the boulders that it shook. “I wanted it back.”

The stranger closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose. “What a shame,” he breathed, turning away from Maiza to face the refreshment table, ginger hair glinting under the overhead light. “Well…it is what it is. He did want it this way, after all. ‘When he wakes,’ that was what he said. I don’t suppose…no, no. No. Carry on. It would be easier if our man was unconscious, but carry on regardless.”

He clasped his hands behind him and did not turn back. Wilbur rounded Maiza’s left side, stepping into his line of vision a moment later. One look at his face confirmed that he was the same man who had killed Maiza in the Mercedes-Benz. One look at his hands found a bone saw.

_I can’t condone total passivity from you, understand?_

“ _Wh_ …” Maiza’s throat spasmed and he coughed for want of water – never before had his throat and mouth been so utterly _dry_ before. Something was happening – some argument between Wilbur and the brunet had broken out but it fell on deaf years while Maiza gagged, not even able to work up enough saliva to whet his lips.

“ _Hfff_ …”

The brunet moved behind Maiza and placed a firm hand on either of his shoulders while Wilbur knelt in front of him, roughly shoving Maiza’s trouser legs upward and gripping Maiza’s right ankle. Every muscle in Maiza’s body went taut.

“ _Ghh…!!”_

The saw split open fabric, then skin. The brunet removed his hands, stuck a stick between Maiza’s teeth like an afterthought and braced Maiza’s shoulders right as Wilbur reached the artery. Maiza shuddered – metal cleaved sinew and found nerves and his head _slammed_ backward; his teeth dug into wood and he screamed soundlessly, vision blurring in and out, white to color to white to black–

 

He came to. Pain crackled down his shin like lightning bolts.

Crushing pressure engulfed his left leg, and darkness overtook him once more.

 

When Maiza next awoke, the universe was more void than tangible. Awareness came to him in spurts, pain stitching his world together fragment by fragment. Throbbing heat reminded him that he still had legs, tingling pinpricks that he once had feet. His wrists winked into existence when ropes chafed against them and blood dripped off his fingertips – and then he remembered that there had been ropes too, binding him to the chair currently digging into his back.

His head – he still had a head – lolled forward, his neck protesting the weight. There was weight on his shoulders too, but he couldn’t place why until it lifted from his right shoulder and something slapped his cheek.

“It’s over,” said the void – no, wait, _handsshouldersbrunet_ and Maiza’s eyes flew open, awareness crashing over him in waves – sight ( _too bright_ ), memory ( _brunetWilbur_ ), smell ( _wood, copper_ ), taste – and he had to close his eyes again, heart thudding in his chest while he got his bearings. Pressed his tongue against aching teeth.

Maiza took a deep breath, counted to three, and opened his eyes for the second time. The ginger crouched in front of him, wide-eyed. “Thank goodness,” he said, patting Maiza’s knee, “I didn’t want this, you know.  _I_ said to knock you out. But it’s what he wanted, and he’s coming soon, so we don’t have much time. Do you want anything?”

With effort, Maiza lifted his head and looked the ginger in the eye. “ _Wh_ …” he tried. “… _Wh_ … _Water_.”

The ginger nodded and didn’t move. Behind him, Wilbur roused from his seat at the table and used a nearby water pitcher to fill a matching glass, which he handed to the ginger. The latter stood, and the hands on Maiza’s shoulders shifted to the chair’s back and tilted it _backward_. Maiza’s stomach clenched, anticipating a drop, but the brunet merely held him in place while the ginger brought the glass to Maiza’s lips.

As greedy for the water as he was, Maiza retained his dignity and drank it measuredly, as he did the next one, and the next before the brunet finally returned the chair to all fours. Somewhat rehydrated, Maiza cleared his throat and rasped, “My feet?”

“Locked away,” answered the ginger, handing the glass back to Wilbur. “Just like he wanted.”

“He?”

“The one who’s coming first,” the man explained patiently. “The one responsible.”

Maiza narrowed his eyes. “…Responsible.”

“For everything, of course!” cried the man. The way his answers always bordered on the cusp of incoherency was beginning to grow irritating, but Maiza couldn’t tell if it was deliberate or unintentional. “Everything that you suspect and more.”

“Then what about you?” Maiza pressed, and he was glad for the phantom pain of his missing feet, for the excessive blood shimmering at his stumps, glad for the clarity it brought him. “You and the other two – did you drive me here?”

The ginger smiled for the first time. “That’s right,” he hummed, “I’m the driver. Just the driver, you understand. I have no interest in—” he gestured broadly, at Maiza, at the room around him, “—all this.”

Maiza struggled for a response. There were too many questions worth asking, and already too many answers that threw him just a little more off-kilter. “All right,” he exhaled. “All right. Since you claim you are not involved, then tell me your name. Your friends’ as well.”

The ginger furrowed his brow but his smile didn’t diminish, creating an altogether unsettling expression. “What to do,” he muttered, stroking his chin, “Giving my name out so casually would be asking for payback, wouldn’t it? Why, it goes against common sense. But!” he exclaimed, his brow smoothing, “You already know Wilbur’s name, so there’s no helping it.”

His logic was absurd, but Maiza had no intention of pointing it out. “He’s Mack,” said the ginger, indicating the brunet standing behind Maiza’s chair with a nod of his head. “And I’m…” he trailed off, indecision flitting across his face. “Well…you can call me Cormac, I suppose.”

 _‘There’s no helping it,’ he says, but ‘you can call me’ immediately calls the name into suspicion. Either it’s a blatantly false name, or he gave his real name while deliberately casting doubt upon it._ Or maybe Maiza was reading too much into the delivery. He couldn’t figure this ‘Cormac’ out for the life of him – not yet, at any rate.

A hollow rapping sound from the floor above them caught everyone’s attention, and Cormac turned his gaze upward with bright eyes. Once the sound ceased, Mack edged around the table and came to a stop by some sort of switch on the wall next to the stairs. He flipped the switch upward, and nothing happened – at least, nothing in the room was affected as far as Maiza could see. One more rap knocked against the ceiling as if in answer, and Mack ascended the stairs to open the trapdoor.

“He’s here,” drawled Cormac. “And here we _go._ ”

Maiza smiled grimly at that. _Finally_.

Two tommy-toting men descended the stairwell, and then another, and—

Maiza froze.

_I know that face._

The blond hair, the faint goatee, the cocky smirk and obnoxious tie – he _knew_ _that face_ , and he wracked his memories for the context that he urgently needed as the third newcomer came to a stop in front of him, arms akimbo.

It clicked.

Maiza looked up, and met the eyes of the man who had had him stabbed years ago – the casino manager whom Maiza had struck the fear of God into, whose men he had brutalized, whose ego he had humiliated…

…All the way back in 1927.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Currently taking names for the has-been casino manager.
> 
> Wilbur, Mack, and...Cormac are original characters.


	4. The Knife

“Well. Look at you – just _look_ at you,” said the manager – or, technically, Maiza supposed he was an ex-manager now. Unless he’d gotten back into the business. Maiza caught a whiff of lavender fragrance when the manager circled around his chair, his heels clicking against the floorboards and coming to a stop behind Maiza’s back. He was close enough now that the scent of lavender overpowered the room’s musty odor. “I thought I told you to cut off his hands.”

Cormac shrugged at him, from where he stood near the meeting table. “No, you didn’t.” 

“I _did_.” The manager spoke sharply, with enough confidence that Maiza found himself agreeing. He had issued the order – there was no question about it. “I told you over the telephone, nice and clear.”

“No…you didn’t.” Cormac flashed him an affable grin, one that suited his face handsomely. Where the manager was sharp-spoken, Cormac affected a leisurely drawl; where the manager tensed, Cormac relaxed. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

The manager completed his circle, returning to where he’d started with his back to Maiza and his hands in his pockets. “Fine,” he snapped, “We’ll talk about this later. Hell, we’ll cut his hands off later. _He_  may as well enjoy the show.”

He whirled around, staring down Maiza with a darkly satisfied expression on his face. “Just _look_ at you,” he repeated, and he lifted his right hand from his pocket – high enough so that Maiza could see a sliver of silver between his fingers.

After having his feet sawed off, Maiza was hardly going to be intimidated by such a little thing as a knife. He was intimately familiar with all the hideous agonies one could inflict with a blade—but all that experience required of him was caution. Maiza could say this with certainty: he was no Martillo _contaiuolo_ if he could be daunted by such an amateurish display. So he raised his chin and his eyebrow and telegraphed nothing when the manager pulled the knife all the way out of his pocket and advanced toward him.

“The day you took out my men…when your blood first returned to your body, I pinned you for a monster,” the manager said, low and spiteful. “I spent the next couple days pissing myself thinking that you’d come after me like the goddamn bogeyman. I hardly slept ‘cause every time I closed my eyes all I saw was your blood flowing in and out, again and again.” He bent forward, and carved a shallow line into Maiza’s skin – following the natural curve of the bag under Maiza’s right eye. Warm blood seeped down Maiza’s cheek, and then zipped up the way it came. 

“But then I started thinking it over,” continued the manager, keeping his gaze glued to Maiza’s cut while it healed. “The memory faded as time went on. By the end of the week, all that fear had dwindled away. Two weeks, and the image was going. By the end of the month…” He shook his head, his lips curving upward. “I decided you weren’t so frightening after all, _contaiuolo_. You may be a monster, but you’re a man, too.” He gestured downward with his knife, at Maiza’s stumps. “After all—men _bleed_.”

The knife moved back to Maiza’s cheek, hovering over the space where the cut had sealed. Then the thin blade lifted higher, and higher, until Maiza found himself staring directly at its tip, and then red, red, _red_ when the blade pierced the muscle under his right eyeball and withdrew, quick as a flash. Not quick enough to keep Maiza from uttering a cry more bestial than human.

He bit the inside of his cheek, _hard_ , to stop himself from doing it again.

The manager tried to affect stoic professionalism by keeping his face blank while Maiza suffered—but he was a crude man at heart, and he couldn’t completely pull off the ‘unaffected mastermind’ persona he’d assumed ever since he descended the stairs. He couldn’t entirely suppress the adrenaline that made his hands shake ever so slightly, nor the near dangerous sense of excitement that empowered him.

“Then again,” the manager said, openly bitter, “I don’t know many men who can take on and dispose of an entire group as easily as you did. And of course…when men are killed, they _stay_ killed. So you’re a monster after all, _Martillo_. In body, and in mind.”

“I suppose it’s easier to accept that you lost both your business and your dignity to a monster rather than a man,” Maiza replied, quietly. The manager flinched as if struck, and Maiza carried on without pausing. “I won’t dispute what I am or am not. I _will_ , however, dispute your front of confidence. You’re awfully cocky for having lied about your fright.”

“Just a goddamned—”

“All right, let’s call it wariness instead. You were wary enough to amputate my feet and bind me, for all your deciding to slough your terror. Would you mind humoring me?” The manager shot Maiza a murderous glare, but—remarkably—gave him a jerky nod. “Thank you. Were you briefed on how your men collected me?”

Bristling with suspicion, the manager responded, “Apparently they noticed you standing on a corner for a while. Like you were _waiting_ for us.”

Maiza let out a soft chuckle. “I was. It hadn’t escaped me that all the attacks had been carried out from prominent distances. The honey in the Alveare, the sniper aiming for me on an open street, the men gunning me down from the safety of a car — all very hands-off methods, and all occurring in open settings. If I wanted you to find me, it followed that all I had to do was bide my time out in the open somewhere. And my logic, simple as it was, soon proved right.”

“Whoop-de-do.” The manager had started tapping his foot, his leg jiggling up and down with impatient energy. “What, you want a medal?”

Maiza merely quirked an eyebrow at him, and said, “You’re missing my point. The fact of the matter is that you never once had your men try to ambush me in some secluded alleyway, or somewhere else in close proximity. No matter our…condition, it is entirely possible to subdue we immortals by sheer numbers alone. And yet—you never tried it. Not once. Because you’d witnessed me fight in similar circumstances, and you _knew_ I would emerge the victor. I don’t know if I should call it apt caution, cowardice, or pessimism. All three, perhaps?”

For a moment, Maiza was absolutely certain that the manager was going to have a fit. His face contorted with sheer outrage, a vein visibly pulsing in his temple; he spat, “You _fuck_ —” and nearly lunged at Maiza with a half-spasm of his shoulders and arms before forcing himself to turn away and take several deep breaths.

Honestly surprised by the manager’s self-restraint (he’d expected another knife to his eye), Maiza had to give credit where credit was due. “Well, you may have changed more than I thought. And you seem to have made a fine living for yourself, despite my intervention. The room speaks for itself.”

The manager scowled openly, persona abandoned. “Shaddup. Thanks to you, I lost everything. It’s all fine and dandy maintaining a casino once you’ve set it up, but _setting it up_? Now, that’s the hard part, ‘specially after word gets out that you were flounced by an outfit as puny as the Martillos. You son-of-a-bitch, you think I had an easy time of it?”

Maiza would’ve shrugged had his hands not been bound behind the chair, and his shoulders not been inflamed. “Then enlighten me. Where is this place? Who is its master, if not you?”

The manager looked backward at Cormac, who held up three fingers and wiggled his hand in that universal _approximately_ gesture. “Let’s call him my benefactor,” said the manager. “Or partner. See…our relationship is based on a strong mutual interest. In fact, it’s how we met in the first place.”

Maiza clenched his jaw. “The Martillos.”

“Weelll, not exactly,” jeered the manager, and Maiza dug his fingernails into his own palms. “He doesn’t give a shit about the Martillo Family like I do. That's my vendetta, and mine alone. But my partner—there’s only one thing he’s interested in.” The manager cocked his head to the side, and tossed the knife up into the air. He caught it by its handle. “And that’s you.”

Maiza lowered his head, his thoughts racing. Names sprang to mind, _Edward Noah, the Dormentaires_ , but… “What sort of interest?” he asked. “Personal…or scientific?”

The manager snorted. “Both?”

A familiar rapping noise sounded overhead. Mack flipped the switch upward as he’d done before, and ascended the stairwell to open the trapdoor at the answering kick. Maiza leaned forward in his seat, straining against the ropes in his need to _see_ the man following Mack down the stairs, to _know_ him.

The man was probably in his eighties, judging from his finely combed silver hair and the wrinkles lining his face. He bore no stoop of the spine and walked proudly, his expensive grey suit outlining his bony frame. 

Maiza didn’t know him at all.

The man hardly acknowledged the manager once he reached him, his piercing blue gaze focused solely on Maiza. “We meet at last, Maiza Avaro,” he said, his accent thickly Slavic. “My name is Miroslav Leskovar. You don’t know it, I am sure. But I know _yours_ , by God.” Leskovar spoke as stiffly as he stood, with a tight, honed anger—and a strained, pensive  _longing_.

“Yes, I know it,” Leskovar continued, that strange clash of rage and gratitude warring for dominance with every vowel, every inhale, “How could I not know it? How could I not know the name of the man who started it all, with whom _he_ was obsessed, yes, _you_!” he cried, each word more fervid the last, whipping himself into the most restrained frenzy Maiza had ever seen. “You, who devoured the late Szilard Quates!”

Maiza’s heart stopped.

_Szilard...!_

Nothing could have prepared him for this. To hear the name of his old nemesis without warning, for Szilard to continue tormenting him even in death­—was nearly too much for him to bear. But…what was it Leskovar had said? _Devoured?_

Perhaps taking Maiza’s silence as one of denial, Leskovar frowned and spoke again. “Superintendent Veld may have been stripped of his duties and placed under surveillance, but he still has allies within the police force. They conveyed his messages to me without fail, and with astonishment, I learned of Szilard’s murder at your hands. How my allies, Szilard’s Chosen, had been apprehended. How Inspector Noah so cruelly destroyed the elixir in front of Veld’s very eyes.”

Leskovar shook his head, and for the first time allowed a hint of raw emotion to surface in his expression. _Scorn._ “How arrogant those lawmen were, and how foolish. To think that we would _all_ have congregated in one spot, or that we had only one meeting place—or that there were only twelve of us! Even with the promised elixir at our fingertips, there were those of us who stayed away—whether serving as emergency backup, attending to professional obligations, or even out of doubt or caution—we stayed away. Now,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “Which one was I?”

Maiza had ceased listening; one thought having overtook all the others.

 _They think I devoured Szilard_.

Of course Maiza had known of Szilard’s followers. Ennis had hastened to warn the Martillos of Szilard’s corrupted elite but thought them all apprehended, and _Yaguruma_ had thought that they wouldn’t dare do anything with the Bureau breathing down their necks.

So Maiza had allowed himself to buy into the tantalizing promise of hope that Szilard’s death had wrought, the hope thrust upon him by Firo and the Martillos. He had allowed himself to become complacent, and hadn’t even considered that Szilard’s followers might not have done the same.

The breadth of Maiza’s stupidity was staggering – but here was his chance to redeem this one mistake, to nip its consequences in the bud.

_They think I devoured Szilard, and not Firo._

“I didn’t think you men knew,” he said, through gritted teeth, “That I’d done it.”

“It could only have been you,” retorted Leskovar. “It was destined to be you. And I thank you for it.” That _longing_ was back in his voice, confoundingly genuine. “I loathe you and I thank you for it.”

Maiza furrowed his brow. “I—what?”

The manager stepped back, having finally realized that the spotlight was no longer his. Leskovar paid him no mind. “You knew Szilard better than all of us,” he said. “Would you call him a kind man?”

Maiza had an absurd, almost hysterical urge to laugh. “No,” he said. “I would never have called him kind.”

“Not even back then...” Leskovar nodded to himself, clearly unsurprised. “Of course not. Perhaps it would have been a far crueler thing if he had been. It is easier to entreat with men who have been evil their whole lives than men who have not. The man who once was kind knows the allure of kindness and manipulates it to his own ends, and is all the more dangerous for it. And yet he is the man for whom we mourn—never the other. Now, Maiza Avaro… “ Leskovar clasped his hands behind his back, and cleared his throat. “…Tell me— _which man am I_?”

Maiza sucked in a sharp breath. “You are one of Szilard’s men,” he answered, finally. “And that is all that matters.”

“No longer!” Leskovar’s former fervor had returned, and he loomed over Maiza with blazing eyes. “I am Szilard’s man no longer! Szilard Quates ruled by fear and we obeyed, knowing that once we had our prize, he would have us bound to him until our usefulness came to an end. No – not all of us. Some were addled enough by age that they truly thought their cares would be over. Of course, you could say that the rest of us were addled in turn for not fleeing when we could...

“Oh yes, we addled old fools stayed on and financed his research­ toward the complete elixir; research that Szilard was forced to undertake because no one—not Superintendent Veld, not that Congressman, not even Szilard himself­—could find you. But now Szilard is gone,” Leskovar finished, with a small, triumphant smile, “…And _you_ have been found.”

“That certainly is the case,” Maiza agreed, more than a little sarcastically. “Now what?”

The manager glanced at Leskovar, who answered at once. “We lay out the terms for your cooperation. Your cooperation in exchange for the Martillos’ lives. You are a discerning man - you understand me, yes?”

Maiza’s lips quivered, threatening to broaden into a smile—but he quickly sobered. All threats to the Martillo Family were ones he took seriously. “I do,” he replied. “Let’s talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I solved my dilemma of giving the manager a name by not giving him one at all. Ha! ...Ha.
> 
> I wasn't sure where to end this chapter at all. I was torn between somewhere around where I've ended it now, and somewhere after a certain future scene. Hopefully this'll work out.
> 
> Thanks to NintegaDS and others for humoring me over all my woes with this chapter.


	5. The Peripety

Leskovar got straight to the point. “I have made my desires fairly plain, have I not?”

Maiza’s smile turned bitter. “Complete immortality, yes. With the elixir gone, I'm your only hope – do I have that right?”

“Naturally.” Without warning, Leskovar’s right hand darted forward and seized Maiza’s forehead. Maiza stiffened instinctively, but relaxed at once. A faint residual hum of disappointment coursed through him at the thought that Leskovar’s hand was not that of a complete immortal. Leskovar’s own disappointment was laid bare in his furrowed brow and deepening frown lines at the corners of his mouth. “I wonder if you can hear how strongly I call for your memories, Maiza Avaro. Over and over, my heart cries _‘I want to eat’_ with nothing to sate it.”

“Is that so,” replied Maiza, closing his eyes and focusing on nothing but the faint chill of Leskovar’s palm on his head. The darkness taunted him. “And you think that I will share with you the elixir’s secrets.”

Leskovar’s bony fingers dug into Maiza’s skin with a vengeance, and Maiza found himself inhaling stuffy cedar-scented cologne as Leskovar’s cuff dangled in front of his eyes. “You must,” Leskovar hissed, and he withdrew his hand as sharply as he had placed it. “For your sake as much as mine, by God. I can imagine how greatly you have agonized these past two centuries, as the sole bearer of such knowledge. Would it not behoove you to shed that burden? No, to share it. To divide the weight of your responsibility and impart to me the second onus – of course, such arguments would not sway you. Not completely.”

Maiza managed a rather ragged laugh, doing his aching shoulders no favors. The continual painful tingling of his stumps was almost a welcome distraction from the question. “It has its temptations,” he allowed. “But you're right. Not completely. I'm afraid that all the potential consequences of sharing what I know far outweigh your promises of peace of mind that are neither guaranteed nor deserved.”

Leskovar eyed him wordlessly, and let out an irritated huff of air. “I am not Szilard Quates,” he said, his tone wholly flat. “I implore you to understand. I want it to be clear. Do not conflate me with such a man.” Maiza opened his mouth to speak, but Leskovar puffed out his scrawny chest and glowered at him for silence. “I know what you are saying – the same thing as before, oh, ‘you are not Szilard but you are his man’ well I shall not let you, Mr. Avaro, never. You know nothing of my dreams for humankind, for my homeland, and for this country, and yet you condemn me by association.”

Maiza’s gaze wandered – to the two armed men standing guard at the stairwell, to Mack, to Wilbur, to Cormac. To the discarded bone saw on the table. “You asked me earlier which man you were,” he murmured. “I had no answer for you at the time. Still, by your own omission back then, you are an evil man. Both choices led to the same conclusion. And I am still to give you what you want?”

Leskovar’s expression turned graver still. “By my own omission…yes. I won’t deny it. Even so, you will do just that.”

That was it. Maiza couldn't take it anymore. He ducked his head down low in an attempt to hide his chuckles, his shoulders protesting with every helpless accompanying shake. “I'm sorry,” he gasped, “I haven't lost my composure like this for some time. It’s just – you think you have a leg to stand on. That I can be threatened into compliance. Not a single man in this room can kill me, and no amount of torture or sealing me away will do you any good. If I break, it will be long after you are dead, I can promise you that.”

The manager’s grip tightened around the hilt of his knife, primed to enact some of that very torture at any further provocation. A single look from Leskovar stopped him in his tracks, and a following nod sent the manager heading for the stairs. One of the armed men followed him, as did Wilbur. “Mack, you stay here,” the manager said, stopping near the man in question. “Cormac, you're with me.”

Cormac rocked back on his heels, cocking his head to one side. “I'm only driving you there,” he said, ever languid. His Irish lilt was stronger than it had been before. “I shan't be joining in. You think you'll force me into joining, but you won't.”

“Just keep your mouth shut and follow orders,” snapped the manager, and Cormac slapped his thighs and hopped off his perch on the meeting table with almost excessive nonchalance. The three other men began their ascent up the stairwell, and Cormac paused on the first step to look around and meet Maiza’s eye. With a wink, he looked downward and shook his right leg – the movement so slight and natural that to anyone else it would have been taken for a simple shaking out of a muscle cramp.

Maiza followed his gaze, just in time to see something small and metal fall out from the trouser leg and onto the floorboards with barely a clatter. Cormac kicked back the heel of his shoe just a tad, yet with enough force to send the object skittering under the table until it bumped against the refreshment table on the other wall. Only now that Maiza was looking more closely, he realized it wasn't a table at all, but a bureau. Its white tablecloth mostly hid what looked like cabinet doors peeking out from under the cloth’s hem.

_Doors. Small and metal._

_Locked away._

Maiza cautiously looked back at Cormac again, but he’d already begun his ascent and now followed Wilbur out through the trapdoor without further ado. Mack moved to close the trapdoor behind them, and Maiza had no chance to process what had just transpired before Leskovar was demanding his attention once again.

“You truly have no intention of giving up your secrets,” said Leskovar, wonderingly. “Even if it means sentencing the rest of humanity to death. ‘It is the natural order’, you may say, or that ‘Earth could not bear it,” to which I could not agree more. It could not. Even so, it remains that you possess the ultimate power to prevent death, and do not deploy it. You are the world’s greatest judge and executioner simultaneously, for you are judging and executing the world itself. Such are my thoughts.”

Maiza decided that he would dwell upon Leskovar’s denunciations later, when he better had the time for self-loathing. For now, he would do well to continue focusing on the matters at hand. “Such as they are,” he replied, “it also remains that I still have the complete advantage.”

Leskovar shifted a little on the spot, turning to the left just enough so that he could see the stairs. “Did he tell you how he and I met?” he asked, quietly. “Your old friend, so to speak.”

Leskovar could only be talking about the ex-manager. “Not really,” said Maiza. “Only that you two are partners of sorts.” He couldn't wholly mask his curiosity, nor did he want to – he couldn't fathom how the two had met at all.

“I see.” Leskovar paused, turned, and headed for the refreshment bureau; Maiza held his breath despite himself, wondering if Leskovar’s shoes would inadvertently come into contact with the key. He exhaled once Leskovar stopped at the near end of the bureau rather than at the front of it, and flexed his fingers to regain feeling in them while Leskovar poured himself a cognac and returned. Behind him, Mack sidled over to the telephone and stationed himself in the chair next to it.

“You'd think that my comrades would have betrayed the rest of us once those officers got their hands on them,” Leskovar remarked, swirling the cognac around in a tall tulip glass. “Or that there would have been other evidence lying about that betrayed our identities. And there were. Of course there were. Those agents had known about our organization for some time, and found implicating correspondence after rifling through my unfortunate comrades' pockets. I was not so senile as to leave tracks, so to this day I have managed to avoid police surveillance.”

He took a sip of his cognac, smirking around the rim of his glass. “So of course, no one batted an eye when I bought the building across the street from the Alveare, two years after you murdered Szilard Quates.”

 _Ah_. Maiza tensed the muscles in his thighs, trying to stimulate them like he had his hands both in anticipation of Leskovar’s next words and in preparation for…well. Something or other.

“I took up residence in one of the rooms facing the street one year later, and simply _watched_. Who went into the Alveare, who went out, I saw it all – including you, Mr. Avaro, in all your smiles and frowns. And then one day, I saw two men standing rigid outside in the pouring rain, facing the honey shop. One brunet and dressed plainly in burgundy, the one on his far left blond and clad in a threadbare suit, separated by many yards. I thought nothing of them – not until they each separately looked away, just enough for me to catch a glimpse of the naked hatred on their faces.”

Leskovar broke his narrative to sup at his cognac, drinking more deeply than he had before. Maiza envied him his drink, again craving something to slake his own recurred thirst. “I knew at once that they were cut from the same cloth as I,” continued Leskovar, “And conceived immediately a plan to recruit them. With money such as mine, I could hire all the men I could ever need - but I had to have them specifically, no matter what. The most useful men are those who share one’s own convictions. So I prepared to go down and speak to them both, but the man on the right set off as I donned my coat, and by God! Before my very eyes, a boy burst out of the shop and took chase.”

There was something familiar about those words, something that tugged at Maiza’s heart and recalled the hard patter of rain outside the honey shop’s window, Firo bolting out the door and into the torrent… Maiza jolted in his seat. _Surely not…_

“What else could I do but accept my loss and snatch up the other man while I still could? He proved most eager to use me and let me use him in turn. I paid for weapons and transport and food, and he recruited more like-minded people to our cause.” Leskovar’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down with his next swallow of liquor, and he took out his handkerchief to dab at his lips. “The same people who now congregate in the building that I own, carrying the machine guns that I bought.”

Maiza gritted his teeth at the unpleasant mental image, of armed men staking out the Alveare with every intention of destroying it while Maiza himself remained God knew how far away. A smile wormed at Leskovar's lips, and Maiza at once regretted giving him the reaction he wanted. “And another group lies in wait in the buildings on the other side, fully prepared to gun down your Martillos and your patrons should you continue to prove uncooperative.”

Just like that, Maiza’s mood lifted.  _Absurd_. “Why on Earth would I ever cooperate with you after you’d killed my friends?”

Leskovar frowned. “Could it be that you aren't taking this seriously? Your precious family _will_ die, by God, or is it that you care nothing for even them? We mere mortals must seem like ants to one who holds the key to life or death in his head.”

 _Ah, but they're not mortals._ “I take all threats to the Family seriously,” Maiza retorted. _The capos, that is. Not the associates._ “But they're harder than you've taken them for. And for all your snooping, it seems you've missed the most crucial point of all.”

Leskovar set his glass down on the meeting table with heavy force, trepidation contorting his face, “What are you saying,” he demanded, “Tell me!”

Maiza gave him a positively wicked smile. “They have _Ronny_.”

❖

The manager leaned against the desk at the back of the room and surveyed his men as they worked, which meant mostly cleaning, loading, and organizing their guns for easy access. Leskovar had told him to pick whichever room in the building would be best suited for his plans, and the manager had picked the office of some guy who was supposed to be spending his whole weekend away working, if the Daily Days’ sources were right.

“Some guy” was an accountant named “Hershel S.,” according to the nameplate the manager had found shoved in the far back of the desk’s bottom left drawer, and if he had to guess he'd say this Hershel S. didn't exactly walk on the right side of the law considering that he'd forgone engraving his name into his door. Well, that, and how he had signed multiple documents on his desk with different surnames.

Frankly the manager didn't give a damn about Hershel. What mattered was that his office had windows that overlooked the Alveare on the other side of the street, that it was big enough to house twelve men including the manager, and that it was located in a building Leskovar owned. Still, the manager _had_ once run a casino, and he could at least take the time to appreciate the decor a little. Interior design was just as fundamental to creating the right kind of atmosphere for an accountant as it was to a casino, and Hershel had generally stuck to using mostly moderately priced (but tasteful) furniture while going all out on just a few items here and there to impress both money and class upon his visitors. The walnut desk was one example, and the plush leather chairs in front of it were another.

What really drew the manager’s eye was the painting of a young woman that hung on the wall behind Hershel’s desk chair. Its subject was simple, unlike its ornate golden frame: it was a portrait of a young blonde woman in a revealing white dress, sitting with her hands clasped in her lap. A single red rose protruded between her index and middle fingers. Well, portraits of young beautiful women were hardly unique, but this one was – he'd never seen anything like it before. Maybe it was the talent of the painter, or maybe it was the lady herself – he didn't know. But he'd never seen an old portrait in which a woman flaunted a...non-conservative dress, or had worn a _come-hither_ expression as this one wore. He hadn’t seen a woman as beautiful as this one either, either in painting or in real life. She felt human, like she could lean out of the portrait at any minute – and yet ethereal in her overwhelming beauty.

The manager was no art historian, but he found himself leaning over the desk to look for the painter’s signature, wondering if he'd heard of the artist. There in the bottom right corner was scrawled _C. Strassburg_ _1708_ in a steady hand – but where was the title? Who was this woman whose likeness Strassburg had captured so deftly? And how had Hershel gotten a hold of such a high-calibre painting in the first place? The manager had a hard time believing that this could be a forgery, and he found himself giving a little more of a damn about Hershel S. than he’d meant to. Maybe he’d seek the accountant out after he finally had his revenge.

“Dave called, said he and Wilbur and the others are setting up shop on their end.”

The manager slid off the desk and nodded at his subordinate, who’d picked up the telephone receiver from its cradle on the desk while the manager had been…occupied. “Good. Rollout should still be in five to ten minutes unless we get a call from Leskovar. …Or so he said. I'm not exactly gonna quit when I’m this close to sticking it to the Martillos. Speaking of which… Let's review one more time, fellas.”

His allies clammed up and looked over at him, much to his satisfaction. The manager clapped his hands and rubbed them in anticipation – a part of him sorely wished he could've stayed behind to make that _contaiuolo’s_ immortal life a living hell, but the promise of destroying the man’s entire Family was too good to pass up. Hell, maybe he'd even get to run across that baby-faced brat of an associate who thought he was actually worth something back in the day. That too held a unique appeal of its own, and he looked forward to personally ruining the kid’s life.

“So, we’re switching things up like I said yesterday – splitting into groups of four instead of three. Ezzie’s group will take point at the windows here to deal with people trying to flee, while Jake’s group and my group rush the front and Dave’s group of ten takes the back. Aim for any Martillo asshole you see, and feel free to threaten and injure the patrons as you see fit. We're going to ruin them from the inside out.”

“My, my…” called a voice, a stranger’s voice, from the doorway. “Such ambitions.”

All twelve men whipped their heads around collectively at the sound, and found the Martillo Family’s _chiamatore_ Ronny Schiatto smirking back at them, having hung his coat on the coat stand by the entrance. The manager sucked in a sharp breath. He'd seen this Schiatto guy before a few times, back when he was staking out the Alveare. Word on the street said he was bad news.

With a condescending ghost of a smirk and a quirk of his right eyebrow, Schiatto swept his gaze over the room and said, “You ought to duck.”

“What?!”

“ **Duck**.”  

Something impossibly heavy slammed into the manager’s shoulders and he and his comrades fell to the ground right as the windowpanes on either side of Hershel’s office ( _wait, windows on both sides?_ ) shattered from the force of machine-gun fire. A dizzying panoply of metal and glass saturated the air above their heads, glittering and terrifying all at once. Ezzie scrambled over to the windows facing the Alveare and peeked over their sill, bullets whizzing over him in perfectly horizontal lines.

“Boss!” he cried. “Nobody’s out there! Nobody’s shooting!”

It was impossible – it had to be impossible – but of course there couldn’t be anyone out there. There couldn’t be, because _Hershel’s office was on the second floor_.

Something intangible stirred within the manager’s gut – something that compelled him to look back at Schiatto and give him his undivided attention. He tried to look away, tried to fight the pull, and his heart lurched when he couldn’t. Schiatto narrowed his eyes at him, and when he spoke the manager could somehow hear him perfectly.

“I'm not in the habit of using my powers for the Family. Not consequentially, you see. It amuses me to use them for inconsequential matters – a party trick here and there, fixing shattered glasses, and so on. So you might imagine my dilemma after I came across your sniper targeting Maiza earlier. To intervene, or not to intervene? That was the question, so to speak.”

“What the _fuck_ are you on about?” spat the manager, anxiously. His men scrambled for their reserve guns, their eyes wide with panic, cursing one after another when the guns jammed – one after the other.

Schiatto rolled his shoulders back and strutted forward into the line of fire without hesitation, bullets and glass spiraling in front of and behind his body and never once into it. “Well, you see – I determined your nature.” He stopped in the middle of the room to adjust his tie, impossibly nonchalant to the chaos swirling around him. “You, who kidnapped our _contaiuolo_ and plotted against our Family – even with all that in mind, I concluded that you are, in the end, _inconsequential_.”

His eyes flashed. “So, inconsequentials that you are: **kneel**.”

The manager watched on in stupefaction as his men moved against gravity and rose like puppets into kneeling positions, and then in horror when the carpet under their feet twisted around their legs, their wrists, their shoulders. A chair skimmed across the floor and scooped Ezzie up, its armrests locking themselves around his forearms, and its back around his clavicle.

Schiatto stepped past the manager’s men writhing on the ground, heading straight for the manager himself. The manager found that _he_ could move, and though this could not have been anything else but a calculated allocation on Schiatto’s part, every instinct in the manager’s body screamed at him to _flee_. The manager lurched to his feet and stumbled around the desk, backpedaling until his back bumped against the painting on the wall behind him.

 _Shit shit shit_ , _what’s he gonna do, oh shit_ –

But Schiatto merely came to a stop in front of the desk, cocking his eyebrow at a point above the manager’s head. The manager tensed, flinched, expected the wall to come crumbling down upon him – but there was no rumble of brick to be heard, no crashing weight upon his neck –

Something brushed against his neck, light as a feather. He froze, hardly daring to breathe as ghostly arms snaked around his shoulders – pale and slender arms, a _woman’s_ arms, and while the right hand played with his tie, the left hand clutched a single red rose with the stalk visible through translucent fingers.

The manager tried to pull away, his heart pounding, but the arms pressed against his chest and held him firmly in place. Then the left hand drifted upward to gently cup his chin and tilt it leftward, bringing with it a faint smell of peaches. He traced the spectral arm upward and found himself face to face with the woman from the painting, leaning her torso out of the frame as if it were any open window. She looked at him through long eyelashes, her lips curving into a coquettish smile.

_Oh, Christ._

He leaned into her hand as it slid upward to rest on his cheek, and drowned himself in intoxication. The scent of peaches, the brilliant blue of her eyes, the low cut of her dress, the warmth of her palm – and _Christ_ the fullness of her lips. Her right hand pushed at his back and he teetered forward on the balls of his feet willingly, desperate to close the gap. 

The woman smiled and closed said gap in one jerk of her hand, giving him a ghosting semblance of a kiss – just the faintest touch on touch – and a warm tingling spread throughout his body, a buzz of pleasure that electrified him from top to bottom and left him this close to boneless. He thought he might have moaned, but the blood roaring in his ears made it difficult to tell – and what did he care when he was busy chasing after _more_ , more skin, more heat, more more more _God please_ and he let out a long groan, frantic for contact.

She exhaled, and he could feel the warmth of her breath on him, and – and – she pulled back.

 _No no no no no wait wait please_ –

The woman returned her left hand to the man’s torso, once again holding him firmly in a two-armed embrace against the wall. Before the manager could utter a single cry of loss, that old _pull_ drew his attention back toward Schiatto. The man’s lips quirked at some private joke, and with an infuriatingly smug smirk, Schiatto said, “That was only a fraction of the real thing. I thought it only fair to tell you.”

_Only?!?!_

“Now, what to do with you,” mused Schiatto, as he came around the desk to examine the manager from a paltry few inches away. “What to do with those who dared to attack the Martillo Family? A death sentence might be in order, wouldn’t you say?”

Behind Schiatto, the manager could make out his men squirming where they knelt entrapped – whether by chair, carpet, or otherwise. Tendrils of carpet tightened around Ike’s neck on Schiatto’s left, and the manager strained against the painted woman’s arms at the sight of the chair smothering Ezzie on Schiatto’s right.

And then it was only Schiatto who filled his vision – Schiatto, Schiatto, Schiatto with his smirk and his lackadaisical posture, his otherworldly eyes –

“M-monster,” choked the manager. 

“No,” corrected Schiatto. “That was Maiza, wasn’t it? If you are so keen to give an epithet, then …what was it the humans call me? Ah, yes.” Fire shot up into the air behind him. The carpet burst into flames, the curtains, the wooden bookshelves. Ike screamed as the carpet around him was set ablaze, and the manager watched in horror as his men were set alight before his very eyes. Schiatto’s eyes gleamed, and the manager was sure he could see twin flames lit in either pupil. “They call me the _devil_.”

The manager shook, and shook, and his legs could not would not support his weight, they couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t but the woman wouldn’t let him sink to his knees. A thin, inhuman whistle of air escaped him, some primal expulsion of pure fear like he’d never experienced before. He squeezed his eyes shut, and prayed for divine intervention for the first time in his life.  _This isn't real can't be real not actually fire no way please God anyone save me...!_

“Now, now,” consoled Schiatto, in a thoroughly amused tone of voice. “It isn’t _me_ you should fear. No, not I. There is only one man who matters here, and _he_ ,” Schiatto said, wearing a possessively fond and smugly satisfied expression, “is Maiza.” 

❖

“Ronny?” Leskovar loomed over Maiza with a hawkish glare. “Your _chiamatore_? What threat is he? What is your meaning?”

Maiza greeted the barrage of questions with barely restrained amusement. “He is no man,” he replied. “Not the earthly sort, I mean. And he is the greatest threat you will ever know. I swear it with all sincerity.”

Leskovar’s fingers twitched impotently by his sides, and he pressed his lips into a thin, hard line. “Who is Ronny,” he rasped, finally. “An immortal? Even immortals are fallible – you, of all people, should know.”

Maiza gave Leskovar an almost agreeable nod, tilted his head pensively. “Ronny is a smug know-it-all,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “A vainglorious so-and-so who thinks himself far wittier than he is. Frankly, he’s a bit of an ass. But he _does_ know everything there is to know, admittedly – except the future, that is – so perhaps he’s justified in his egotism.”

He let out a deliberately too loud affectionate chuckle at the thought of his old friend, hoping it would mask the sound of him dislocating his own left wrist between the chair’s back rungs. Pain washed over him, but having dislocated his wrist before he fought against the feeling and slipped his wrist out of the rope and somehow kept his wits about him as his carpal bones resettled.

“But for all his knowledge and his powers, Ronny had no home to speak of - as did I, all those years ago. It wasn’t just myself whom the Martillos welcomed, it was Ronny, and I think Ronny needed them as much as I did.” Maiza scrabbled at the rope still coiled around his right wrist with his left hand, prying the knot loose with stiff, tingling fingers. “And when you consider the sort of people who would take in a stray like myself and a demon like Ronny – or as near as one – then frankly it astounds me,” – and here he broke off to swallow spit, to whet his thirst as the rope fell from his fingers – “That you would ever think it wise to go up against the Martillo Family and expect to _win_.”

He half-rose from his seat, and lunged.

❖

Dave was having an extremely not-good time of things.

First of all, it was several minutes past the time they were supposed to put their whole “gun down the Alveare” plan into action. Their man waiting by the telephone of the shop next door had yet to receive the signaling phone call, and Dave’s group had been left to stew in the back alley behind the Alveare and wonder what the hell was going on.

Second, Sid had come back from scouting to report that not a single Martillo executive or associate seemed to be inside the Alveare. Sure, it wasn’t as if there wasn’t any gain to be had in gunning down only patrons, but Dave couldn’t but help think it odd that no Martillo was lounging about the place this time of day. And it was a mite inconvenient, considering that the Martillos themselves were the main targets of Dave’s operation.

Third, Dave’s group was currently surrounded by shady folk on either sides.

“Hey, if it ain’t like Ronny said!” called a skeletally thin man, from where he and a small group of men stood blocking the alley’s entrance on Dave’s left. A similarly sized group of men blocked the exit on Dave’s right, headed by a graying Asian man who stood with a confident, strong posture that Dave thought incongruent with his apparent age.

“Just like he said,” agreed the large, rotund man on the first man’s right.

Dave’s men clustered together, all of them moving jerkily like frightened colts. They clutched their guns as if they were lifelines. Wilbur was the only one who seemed unaffected by the set-up, and he stood sedately on the outskirts of the knot of men and waited for orders.

Dave’s throat had closed with nerves, but he sucked in a breath and told himself, _get a grip_. “What are you waiting for?” he cried. “ _Shoot_ , you idiots!”

His men didn’t have to be told twice. His two fastest shooters dropped to their knees and felled four of the Martillos on Dave’s left without any fuss, and Dave grunted his approval as he readied his own submachine gun and fired off a round at a salt-and-pepper haired Martillo on his left. The man dropped like a stone, and Dave guffawed at his success. _Gotcha, asshole…_

_??? !!!_

A kid popped up in front of him. A baby-faced brunet in a green suit cracking a nasty grin three sizes too big for his face appeared in front of him and sent his gun flying with one well-placed kick. Dave stumbled back and fumbled for the pistol in his belt, but the kid let out a rushed _oh no you don’t_ and lunged forward, punching _left-right-left_ at Dave’s chest.

Dave tried to deflect the first blow but failed to block it and the others, and he took the next several blows to his ribcage ungracefully. Each hard hit to his ribs knocked just a little more breath out of him, and as his reel backward turned into a half pivot he caught a glimpse of the elderly mustache-man deftly flipping one of his guys ass-over-teakettle. Two more of his men lay unmoving on the ground nearby, but that was all Dave saw before the kid’s foot slammed into his stomach and sent him to the ground.

_How the fuck?_

The kid looked down at Dave and cracked his knuckles, seemingly unconcerned about the fighting going on around him. Except now that Dave concentrated past the blood rushing in his ears, it seemed awfully quiet for a street fight. He dared to look behind him, and found the rest of his men incapacitated – some of them down for the count, others kneeling on the cobblestones with their hands raised in the air. Even Wilbur had stopped moving where he stood, his eyes wide and unseeing. There were very few things that could scare Wilbur into inertness (Wilbur rarely understood consequences), and his sudden meekness frankly scared _Dave_. 

The smell of gasoline hit him, and he realized that Wilbur was drenched head to toe in the stuff. The skeletally thin and hugely rotund man stood on either side of him, each holding a matchbox and a lit match in either hand.

_Shit. Shit!_

“Hey,” said the kid. Dave looked over at him. Behind the kid, he could see the salt-and-pepper Martillo he thought he’d killed get to his feet along with the four men his two shooters had previously killed. Dave gaped. “If you’re gonna declare war on the Camorra, you’d better be damn sure you’ll win. You’re all pretty stupid, huh.”

Dave dug his knuckles into the stone beneath him, skin scraping against rock, and railed at the very idea of being talked down to by a snot-nosed _kid_. “Fuck off,” he spat. “There’s more where we came from.”

“Yeah, sure,” drawled the kid, and the dismissive tone he used sent Dave’s blood boiling. “Ronny said he’d deal with them. He was pretty pissed at you guys for targeting Maiza, and y’know, so are we.  See, he’s Family, in both senses of the word, and when you go after one of us, you go after all of us. So… Here’s the thing.” The kid gave Dave an oddly haughty look, one that did not quite suit him. Dave got the feeling he was trying to emulate someone. “You’re not getting away with this. And if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that Maiza’s not going to let your boss get away with this either.”

Dave pressed his knuckles into the cobblestones so fiercely he could feel his skin bursting. The kid noticed, and arched one thoroughly unimpressed eyebrow his way. “Take it like a man, would ya? Today’s your lucky day, anyway. Normally we’d a’ probably sent you away in body bags, but since all that gunfire of yours will have attracted the cops, well…” He grinned a shark’s grin. “We’ll just send you away in handcuffs instead. Enjoy the clink, assholes.”

Sirens sounded off in the distance. Dave’s muscles tensed in cold dismay, and raised his hands to look at his unshackled wrists. All he could do now, he supposed, was sit tight and wait for his boss to buy their freedom once he dealt with that miser. His boss _would_ come out on top, of course. With all that money, of course he would.

Dave hoped and prayed he’d remember the little folk when he did.

 _Ah...shit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After much grief over this chapter...here it is, more than double the length of the average length of the previous chapters.  
> Whoops?
> 
> Edit - realized several hours after posting that I'd accidentally deleted a line. Have added it in.


	6. The Hand

Maiza’s right hand shot towards Leskovar’s forehead with the speed and precision of a viper’s strike, fingertips brushing against Leskovar’s wrinkled skin within seconds. Leskovar reeled backward with reflexes just fast enough to evade capture, but Maiza slipped his legs out of the ropes binding his shins to the chair legs – the funny thing about having one’s feet amputated was that it made it a lot easier to escape leg bindings – and, rather than try to keep himself upright on his stumps, let himself collapse forward onto Leskovar.

Leskovar howled, “His hands! I told you to _cut off his hands_ —!” only to choke as Maiza seized his forehead with his right hand and his neck with his left. Maiza scrambled upright into a kneeling position and hauled Leskovar up with him, keeping his hands firmly on Leskovar’s head and neck all the while. 

A round of gunfire sounded off near the stairwell, and Leskovar’s body jolted forward from the impact of several bullets from behind, some passing through and others embedding themselves inside him. He died instantly, but a body was a body and his corpse remained a useful human shield, though not perfect – one bullet passed through Leskovar’s side and clipped Maiza’s hip, and others missed Leskovar entirely and grazed Maiza’s arms instead. Maiza peeked around Leskovar’s body long enough to see the two tommy-toting men firing off their machine-guns his way, and Mack behind them ascending the stairwell.

It was impossible for Maiza to tell if the tommy-toters knew what Mack was doing, and even if he had the breath to spare he doubted he would have called attention to their comrade. Mack paused briefly on the stairs to glance back at the tommy-toters and Maiza and Leskovar, his expression unreadable. Then, he opened the trapdoor and slipped out of sight.

There was no sense in trying to stand – it would be incredibly difficult to try and walk on stumps, and there was more shelter from the meeting table and Leskovar’s table to be gained by kneeling. Maiza shuffled forward on his knees toward the bureau, the painful tingling of his stumps increasing in intensity the closer the bureau became. Every movement sent the corpse bumping into his thighs, and every second more he held the corpse overhead as a shield intensified the trembling of his arms.

Well, no matter. Maiza would have to bear the strains and aches, because not bearing them would be the death of him. Temporarily, and permanently.

The little brass key winked at him from where it lay inches away from the bureau. Maiza could not afford to hesitate, not when Leskovar’s body thrummed underneath his right hand with the verve of regeneration, not when Leskovar’s men still had the advantages of firearms and feet. He released Leskovar’s neck but kept his hand on Leskovar’s forehead, neither stupid enough nor reckless enough to forfeit his most powerful trump card. Maiza held Leskovar aloft with the strength of his right hand alone, and with his left he reached for the key, further, further, ever further. 

Maiza caught the key’s bow with the tip of his middle finger and snatched it up. To his ears came a dull thumping noise, a pounding tattoo too loud and too wooden to be that of his own heartbeat no matter how alike the rhythms were. It was the thudding of Maiza’s feet against the cabinet door, and it filled and drew attention to the silence overwhelming the room.

The two guards had stopped firing.

“If you come near me,” Maiza called, fumbling for the lock, “I’ll devour him.” It was no use; he could not reach the lock from where he knelt. He dragged Leskovar close and pinned the man’s head to the bureau with his right hand, the two guards hovering by the edge of the table in his peripheral vision. Such hesitation struck Maiza as odd – Leskovar had seemed the sort of man who would have foreseen and carefully instructed his men on what to do in such a scenario. 

There was no time to dwell on it. Their inaction, no matter how brief, had granted him precious more seconds to work with. There was no time to think at all. Now was the time for instinct, and he slid the key into the keyhole and turned it just as Leskovar’s chest heaved for want of air. “By God!” Leskovar panted, “What–!” 

His words spurred the bodyguards into action: they charged at Maiza as one, regardless of whether or not that had been Leskovar’s aim. Leskovar struggled for his freedom with a lion’s rage, clawing for Maiza’s eyes with gnarled, grasping fingers. Maiza smashed his skull back into the bureau with an audible crack, wrenching the unlocked cabinet door open with his free hand. 

Twin streaks of flesh and leather whizzed out of the cabinet with shocking force, and Maiza gasped as his sock and shoe-clad feet reattached themselves to his legs. Bone fused with bone, there went his talus, his navicular, sinew and muscle and nerve and skin reknitting in spine-tingling haste – and then came the sudden, incredible onslaught of _feeling_ , of being able to flex toes against wool and leather – and of the heavy painful buzz that always accompanied sleeping limbs and appendages.

Maiza immediately twisted and rolled back on the soles of his feet into a reclining position as one of the guards reached him, supporting his weight with his hands while he drew his left knee up and kept his right leg outstretched. He took the guard’s kick to his left shin, drawing his right leg back and blasting his foot into the guard’s left kneecap with stupefying power. The guard couldn’t stumble back fast enough to avoid the blow entirely and his knee locked; he staggered, his footing lost, and Maiza leapt to his feet and drove his elbow into the back of the man’s neck with such strength that the man all but crashed into the ground.

Maiza’s feet remained asleep, and putting weight on them, much less walking on them, was like stepping on nettles. He lurched to his left, a right hook from the second guard clipping his jaw, and threw a punch of his own aimed directly at the other’s Adam’s apple. There wasn’t enough momentum behind the blow to crush the guard’s windpipe, but it was just enough to cause him pain and send him off-balance. With his hands now close to the guard’s face, Maiza lifted his thumbs to gouge out the guard’s eyes.

The guard jerked his head backward in a frantic attempt to dodge Maiza’s fingers, so Maiza drew his arm back like a tightly coiled spring and rammed his fist into the other man’s left temple. He was too close to the man for it to be a killing blow, but he was confident enough that it would cause a concussion at the very least. The guard’s body yielded, spinning so that his back was to Maiza – Maiza swiftly reached around either side of the man’s head to hook two fingers into either cheek and _pulled_ , stretching the lips wide. His opponent let out a strangled scream, and Maiza, as soon he felt warm blood spilling down his own skin, threw the man to the ground and stomped once on his groin.

Satisfied that the man was down for the count, Maiza gripped the back of the nearest chair and turned to look for Leskovar by the bureau. Leskovar, recovered and standing, clutched the bone saw in his right hand and shot Maiza a fierce glower. Maiza tensed at the weapon, and took a careful step forward to test the waters. 

Leskovar took a step backward in turn, confirming Maiza’s suspicions. The bone saw shook ever so slightly in Leskovar’s hands, and he cried, “I will tame you, beast—know your place, by God!”

Maiza limped toward him steadily, wordlessly, each step sending needles shooting up his ankles. Leskovar retreated at a faster pace, holding the bone saw in front of him like a holy cross. “Wicked brute,” he spat, “Fights should be clean, quick – not like _that_. You are power-mad in a vein which is remote even to me.”

His words went unanswered. Maiza remained ever silent, ever moving, predator against prey. The two of them passed the telephone on the wall, and Leskovar’s eyes strayed to it. He resettled his gaze on Maiza quickly enough, for he must have understood that there existed no universe in which Maiza would permit him to reach the telephone.

“I condemn you,” said Leskovar, his voice tight. “I condemn your selfishness, your monstrosity, the unilateral power that you hold. I—” His back met the far wall, and he swung the saw with spiteful, fear-tinged wildness. Maiza caught the blade with his left hand, his palm’s skin splitting all the way to the web between his index finger and thumb. The blood gushing from the cut caused Maiza’s hand to slip a little down the blade, but its protruding serrations dug their onerous selves further into his palm and stopped the blade from sliding further. Maiza met Leskovar’s stricken eyes and wrenched the saw out of the other man’s hands.

Within seconds, Maiza’s right hand once more pressed itself against Leskovar’s forehead. Leskovar’s shoulders jerked with clear aggression, but he did not attempt to fight for his freedom this time. “Well, well, _baraba,_ tell me. What shall you do to your prey?” Maiza increased the pressure on his head in response, and Leskovar curled his lips even as the color drained from his face. Corpse-white, he croaked, “Come now, executioner — _execute_!” 

Maiza sunk the blade of the bone saw into the soft, wrinkled flesh of Leskovar’s neck until he reached the right carotid artery. Blood poured from the terrible gash in a steady current, mingling with Maiza’s own blood and running down his left arm under his sleeve. Leskovar's initial guttural scream became a long, agonized gargle, and eventually that too faded into silence.

Leskovar’s blood still flowed in death, and his forehead remained warm and clammy underneath Maiza’s palm. His eyes remained open and lifeless, and Maiza met them briefly.

He pushed the saw in deeper.

Maiza drove the saw in with tiny back-and-forth motions, each back and each forth torture on his left hand. He only stopped once he lodged the metal into Leskovar’s cervical vertebrae, and then braced the saw’s handle with his right hand so that he could unhook his skin from the serrations. Blood flowed up his wrist and back into the gouges, and more still came even after the flaps of skin had resealed themselves – Leskovar’s blood – and the feeling of liquid trickling up one’s skin out of sight, invisible and autonomous, was nothing short of repulsive. The blood came to hover around Leskovar’s neck and crawled around the blade in undulating waves, unable to return to its host.

Finally sure that the corpse would not expel the saw as Szilard’s body had the knife in 1930, Maiza released the saw and let the corpse sag against the wall. A small bloody trail streaked down the wallpaper in its wake, slow to chase after the body. When that too disappeared, Maiza sat down in the nearest chair, dropped his head into his hands, and finally allowed himself to think. 

In the silence, it was – difficult, to think. The quick beat of his heart and the tormented breathing of the two nearby guards made for a cogent distraction, and Maiza covered his face with his hands and inhaled deeply to center himself. That his hands were still steady was a gratifying, if expected, discovery.

He had not devoured Leskovar. He could still devour Leskovar. He had not devoured Leskovar because temporarily killing him meant that he would still have the opportunity to devour Leskovar _later_ , and later was – well, later was now, if one possessed a technical, fussy sort of mind. Of course, that _had_ been his reasoning, and now that now was now, he had to do something about it.

Maiza’s right hand itched, and he clutched it in his left hand with an almost fragile tenderness. After a moment he brought his clasped hands upward, resting his lower lip and chin on his index fingers. A quick glance to his right found Leskovar’s corpse, and he regarded it with cool, detached interest. If this was to be his atonement for not devouring Szilard all those years ago, then he ought to devour Leskovar without delay. He squeezed his eyes shut and he was kneeling on the cobblestones by the Alveare, watching Firo devour Szilard in his stead.

Firo – oh, Firo. There was no atonement here, not in the ruins of what had already passed. Firo had Szilard’s memories and knowledge, and he would have them eternally. The damage had already been done, and it was all Maiza could do to pray that Firo would stay Firo. That he would not curdle into something lesser, some poisonous, perverted embodiment of greed and wretchedness alien to his very essence.

“C’mon, Maiza,” Firo said, and Maiza raised his head to see Firo stood in front of him with his hand outstretched, openness and youth in his countenance so anathema to what Szilard had been in his lifetime. “What’s the matter?” Firo’s hair lengthened, he smiled Gretto’s smile and Maiza pressed his fingers to his lips in suppression of grief suddenly as potent and raw as it had been in centuries past. “Jeez,” Firo sighed, his lips curling, his face wrinkling with sour, ancient disdain. “You’re really weak sometimes, aren’tcha,” and Maiza shook himself and stood abruptly.

Call it an excuse, call it a dodge, but the truth of it was that Leskovar had directly challenged the Martillos, and the Martillos had a right to determine his sentence. Maiza was no Don, and even if he were he would have thought it only right that Leskovar’s fate be decided democratically. That, and Leskovar was not as clandestine a man as Szilard. Leskovar was known to the public. His influence, his money, his position were all public. It would be impossible for him to ‘disappear’ without consequences, and, of course, there was the matter of Victor. 

There was the matter of Ennis.

There was also the matter of the two guards, whom Maiza supposed he should probably check considering that they had yet to do or say much of anything since they’d hit the floor. He crouched over the closest guard on his left, the one whose knee he’d disabled. The guard lay on his side, one hand loosely cupped around the skin under his injured knee and the other curled near his shoulders. Maiza poked his neck, and the only answering sign of pain was the bugging of the guard’s eyes.

His companion lay curled in the fetal position, eyes half-lidded and glassy from concussion, barely responsive when Maiza moved his index finger back and forth in front of the man’s eyes. A vertical bloody crack ran down both the man’s lips, teeth visible despite the fact that the man’s mouth was closed. Had Maiza pulled further at the time, he would have undoubtedly torn the rest of the flesh off.

 _Handiwork befitting a Mafioso_ , wasn’t it. Maiza stood, and headed for the telephone by the bureau. Both Mack and Cormac had used the telephone while he’d been captive, and looking at it served as a sharp reminder of their absence. He supposed _they_ were a Matter, too, and he lifted the receiver and brought it to his ear.

It was not an operator’s voice that greeted him, but Ronny’s.

“Ah, Maiza,” Ronny drawled, all silk and smoke. Never had there been a more welcome voice. “I trust your side is well in hand?”

Maiza blinked, and recovered. “Awfully magnanimous of you to ask, isn’t it?” Not only because Ronny surely knew the answer already, but because everything up until now had been the result of Maiza’s change of mind several hours after his initial request that Ronny remain passive on the morning of the sniper attack. Or rather – a slight change in mindset. That afternoon, he had proposed Ronny focus his attention on protecting the Martillos while he investigated Leskovar – and he wondered now what had come of their agreement.

“It went splendidly,” Ronny answered, unabashedly smug. “I’ll tell you all about it on the way.”

Maiza cast an eye over the room, gaze settling on the spiral staircase. “You know, I don’t even know where I am.”

“Well, no matter.”

“Or how long I’ve been out.”

“A trifle.”

“When you say ‘on the way’—”

“Yes,” Ronny interjected, patiently. “I _do_.”

Maiza paused. “Ah.” The silence spooled. “And I gather you…”

“Quite.” Ronny’s voice lost some of its conceit, softening with sympathy. “It’s been a long hash of it, I suppose.”

A shiver down Maiza’s spine brokered the delicate calm. “Yes,” he murmured, unspeakable weariness humming in his bones. “I suppose.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up cutting 403 words in the process of writing this, out of concern that in them I'd not only written Maiza out of character, I'd killed the pacing/tension of the scene. As bonus content, I've uploaded them [here](http://agallimaufryofoddments.tumblr.com/post/166141943176/the-honeypot-affair-bonus-content) if you're curious and would like to read the deleted scene. 
> 
> Sorry this chapter took so long. Writing fiction was hard in general, the past month, and specific to this I had trouble settling on how the chapter would play out (that I had to cut 403 words is evidence as to that struggle). Still not entirely sure about it.
> 
> Maiza is fighting extremely dirty here, inspired by his fight in 1935-B. Several of the moves he uses (including but not limited to: the 'fish-hook' - aka hooking his fingers into the guard's cheeks, the stomping of the groin, the attempt at eye-gouging) are actually currently illegal in the UFC, and when the UFC forbids something it's usually because that move is potentially a killing move, and an absolutely unfair one.


	7. The Aftermath

Victor was in a scowling sort of mood.

He scowled at the wallpaper as he made his way down the spiral staircase; he gave a great glower in the vague direction of the meeting table, growled a grisly grimace the bureau’s way, and granted a grotesque glare at the telephone for good measure. He finished off with a sweeping look of general contempt around the room, and then turned the full weight of his stink-eye on a hapless Edward Noah. 

“Well?”

Edward shook his head, expression rueful and bitter all at once. “Looks just like the first one did. First one had a landing for the stairwell, this one doesn’t, but other than that…they’re more than just similar.” The trapdoor above the two of them clicked open as he talked, and Agents Donald Brown and Bill Sullivan descended the staircase with sure, quick steps. Edward tossed an acknowledging nod their way, but continued speaking without pause.

“I just don’t want to believe it, sir,” he said, mouth puckering. “We interrogated Superin…Mister Veld and the rest, we ordered surveillance on them, we went through their correspondence…and somehow we failed to pick up on a whole other secret meeting room?”

“And the identity of another one of Szilard’s sponsors,” chimed Donald, as he joined them.

“And, _hrm_ , Veld’s allies,” Bill added, shrugging apologetically when Edward gave him a pained look.

“Motherfuckers,” Victor swore, half-heartedly kicking at the nearest chair. “And we thought we’d clamped down on Veld’s police force buddies, too. Shit! Veld’s been laughing at us the whole time! What the fuck do the boys in blue think they’re doing, remaining loyal to a guy who’s been goddamned stripped of his badge and then lying about it to the fucking _Feds_?”

Edward scrubbed a hand over his face, his worn expression suiting a man far older than his still relatively youthful age. Given his sunken cheeks and eyes, a reflection of the weight he had lost during his long hospital stay, he almost looked the part. “I—” He hesitated. “It’s—” His mouth clamped shut. 

Grim sympathy for his subordinate’s plight gave Victor’s anger a further edge, and he stomped his way over to the human-shaped outline against the wall on his far right. The outline’s legs and feet were stretched out against the floor, but the upper torso marked the otherwise unblemished wallpaper. “So this is where Langsley and the police found our man Leskovar?”

“Yessir.” It was Donald who answered, coming to hover at his side. “They reported that when they first entered the room, Leskovar was slumped against the wall with his wrists and ankles bound together by rope. Maiza Avaro was keeping watch over him from here.” He walked past a chair, brushing his hand on the back rung to indicate it as ‘here’, and then toed two more humanoid outlines on the floor a little ways on with the tip of his left shoe. “And lying here were two men in Leskovar’s employ, in poor – and dare I say, bloody – condition.”

One of the outlines was that of a human in profile, curled in on itself with arms and legs coiled tightly near the torso. The other outline was of a human who must have been lying on his back when he was found, one arm cutting off at the torso – probably the hand had been lying on his stomach. “They’ve both been taken to the hospital under police supervision… Avaro admitted to personally afflicting their injuries, but said it was in self-defense.”

That only served to remind Victor of how one of the lead hijackers of the _Flying Pussyfoot_ had claimed all his kills were done in, well, self-defense. He’d laughed in Bill’s face when he heard Bill’s report at the time, but when it was someone like Maiza who was making such a claim…

Maiza Avaro. One of Victor’s oldest friends, literally, and one of the only people who would outlast the Earth right alongside him…and yet a member of the camorra, a pervasive criminal organization that continued to rot the underbelly of New York.

“Just – just start from the beginning,” Victor said, with an unenthusiastic wave of his hand. “Start to finish, tell me everything Maiza told us.” Of course, he planned on talking to Maiza himself later on, but there was no better time to hear out Maiza’s original statements in the room where it all happened. With a ‘typical’ person of interest, it was also a good way to sniff out discrepancies in testimony.

As a camorrista, Maiza’s word against Leskovar’s – whatever Leskovar’s word _was_ – was laughable. As Victor’s wayward friend – he wouldn’t get special preference. Couldn’t. And besides, Victor was still mad at him for that whole ‘I will be willingly complicit in the criminal acts of a mafia organization’ thing. God _damn_ it, Maiza.

“Well, sir,” Donald said, “Maybe I should start with Ronny Schiatto first.”

“ _What_?” Victor pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wait – no, that’s right, Langsley did say something about the Martillos…”

See, the thing was, he hadn’t been briefed at the time shit went down. The first he’d heard of anything was when Langsley had called him from some street telephone booth, forty minutes ago. “Sir, we’ve got a situation,” Langsley had said. “The Martillos contacted us about a kidnapping. Victim was Maiza Avaro.” _That_ had made Victor catch his breath, but what came next – what came _next_! – “The cell of Szilard Quates that was busted back in 1930 wasn’t as busted as we thought. You’ll want to be here for this in person.”

So Victor had grabbed his coat and gun and headed off to the address Langsley had rattled off to him with his mind whirling, meeting up with Edward, Bill, and Donald outside the building in question. Langsley and the police had already packed up shop, which had pissed Victor off until Bill had said, “ _Erm,_ sir, the accused kidnapper that Langsley’s escorting? That would be Miroslav Leskovar.”

Miroslav Leskovar. One of New York’s wealthier business industrialists, and a poster child for the so-called American Dream rather than hailing from one of Manhattan’s dynastic families. After immigrating from Slovenia at the young age of sixty-two, he'd somehow managed to make himself a millionaire and land himself a manor on Millionaires’ Row within the span of two decades, not that his neighbors knew it. By all accounts Leskovar was the most private of fellows, yet seemed to dabble in a multitude of industries – shipping, steel, and fur, among others.

That someone with that much money and apparent insider influence could have potentially been in cahoots with Szilard made Victor’s stomach churn. Admittedly not as badly at it had when he’d learned a Congressman was among Szilard’s followers, but…

“Start from – start from Leskovar,” Victor amended, his gaze inevitably drawn toward Leskovar’s outline on the wall. “Firo’s servant – Ennis, Szilard’s creation – she never named Leskovar as one of Szilard’s people.” 

Bill cleared his throat. “ _Hmm…_ She was alone when she met Langsley outside the building, sir. Apparently she had, _ah_ , no idea that Leskovar was one of Szilard’s crowd. Langsley said she appeared quite shaken.”

Victor wasn’t sure how to feel about _that_ , but Edward luckily picked up where Bill left off and saved him from having to think about his feelings on any meaningful level for now. “Other than Leskovar’s presence in the room itself and Avaro’s statements, we don’t have anything. Langsley’s sticking with Leskovar while he’s in custody, so Patterson’s already out hunting for a potential paper trail while Fletcher and Moynihan are looking into Leskovar’s work relations for potential interviews…” 

“Sure, right, whatever, we’ll talk about the bureaucratic bullshit later or on the way or something.” Victor moved back toward Maiza’s chair and stood before it, grimacing at the two odd bands of tied rope strewn on the floor near the chair’s legs. “How the fuck did Maiza end up here is what I wanna know.” 

“Automobile, sir,” Donald quipped, and he had the decency to look a little abashed at Victor’s unamused expression. “Really, sir, he _did_ …” And with that, Donald told him everything he’d heard from Langsley; starting from how Maiza had apparently been repeatedly murdered (so _that_ was why they’d gotten reports of tommy gun fire…) prior to the kidnapping, to his interrogation–

“Interrogation?” Victor asked, temporarily halting in his quest to pace a hole through the floor. “What do you mean? Whose word is that, Langsley’s or Maiza’s?”

“Avaro’s, sir,” replied Bill, who’d taken over the explanation. “According to Langsley, he seemed reluctant to elaborate.”

An almost magnetic pull drew Victor’s unwilling gaze toward a bone saw lying on the meeting table, _the_ bone saw, the bone saw he’d tried his damndest to ignore when he’d first entered the room. There weren’t any good reasons for it to be there in the first place, no easy-way-out explanations for why one would have a bone saw in a secret meeting room.

Once upon a time he’d gone and caught his leg in an iron mantrap while fleeing Fenian agitators, bones smashing from the force of the spiked jaws. One look at the saw brought back that crippling, overwhelming pain for upwards of an instant, followed by Maiza’s face, and Victor thought he just might be sick.

Then he tucked that thought away and forced himself to swallow, because of course he wouldn’t be sick, that was for rookies and people who hadn’t already died multiple countless painful deaths like he had. There was no way Maiza had lived for two hundred years without going through the same. He was a big boy, and Victor was not going to worry about him over something so _trivial_.

So he resumed pacing, and Bill resumed speaking, and he heard all about how Maiza had fought off the guards and then restrained _Miroslav Leskovar_ with rope and Christ if this wasn’t all a great big fucking mess. He opened his mouth to politely point out just how huge of a Great Big Fucking Mess this was to his subordinates, but a single pair of footsteps banging across the ceiling put a temporary hold on that thought.

Moments later, the trapdoor opened partway. “Sir,” called a rookie, face unusually pale through the crack, “All the telephones are ringing. They’re all – they – I –”

“Keep your head,” Victor barked, indignation over the unprofessionalism winning out over bafflement. “Rookie or not, you’re an agent of the law and you’re damn well going to act like it. Fucking _breathe_.” 

The trapdoor clicked shut. When it opened again, the rookie looked decidedly more composed than he had before, despite his pallor. Quietly pleased, Victor assumed a stern expression and said, “Right. You want to try that again?”

“Yes, sir. Every single telephone booth in the area has gone off, sir. There’s ringing coming out of the shops and windows, it’s a helluva din.”

 _You’re joking_ , Victor almost said. _Try that again_ , he nearly spat. Instead, he peered up at the rookie and replied, “There. Was that so hard?” and he was already moving away from the saw and outlines to the stairwell, adding, “You’ve got a lot to learn, rookie,” as he clambered up and past him and out through the front doors and holy _fuck_ that was a helluva din.

From the shops across the street and from the windows above them, from the buildings on the next block over, from every telephone booth in sight bellowed a continuous clamor of noise, like the Daily Days newsfloor amplified five times over. Here and there people leant out of their apartments’ windows to stare at their neighbors in mutual helplessness, and a few shop patrons staggered out and onto the pavement with their hands over their ears.

“Sir?” Edward and the others had caught up to him, it seemed. All three senior agents appeared remarkably stalwart in the face of the commotion, with Bill’s atypically alert expression the sole visible affectation of the cacophony. _That rookie had better be taking notes_. “What’s the plan?”

No moaning and wringing of the hands, straight to action – just how Victor liked it. That settled it; the plan was to give the rookies a firm lecture on outstanding agent conduct as soon as all this bullshit was out of the way. A good old-fashioned verbal rigmarole. He couldn’t _wait_.

With his allotted minute of indulgent fantasizing up, Victor refocused on the business at hand. “One of you may as well investigate the surrounding streets and figure out how big of a problem we got here. If you do find an unaffected telephone, wring the operators dry of information. Me, I’m gonna do what one normally does when a telephone rings.”

Edward nodded and was off down the sidewalk just like that, no questions asked. Victor in turn made for the nearest booth before Donald could make whatever smart-aleck remark trembled at his lips and slid inside, leaving the door open so that he could better see his people. Glaring at the telephone did nothing to censure it, so he put the receiver to his ear and everything became very, very still.

From the silence, there emerged the sound of blood thrumming in his ears, the thump of his heartbeat, the swallow that did nothing to ease the ache in his throat. Edward shuffled into view from behind the right frame of the booth, having doubled back, and Victor waved at him once to indicate that he’d seen him. 

It was only when he brought his hand down to scrub at his face did he realize his eyebrows were drawn, his mouth tight with nerves. _Shit_. He forced himself to relax, only for his shoulders to tense up again when a deeply confused “…Hello?” sounded out from the receiver.

The voice was that of an older male. Victor played ‘good cop, bad cop’ out in his head, and settled for a not-quite-neutral sounding, “Who is this?”

“I… Are you Mr. Talbot, by any chance?”

Victor stiffened at the sound of his name. “I asked you a question,” he repeated, shifting so that he faced away from the booth’s entrance. “Who are you? Who gave you that name?”

Some sort of racket was going on in the background on the other end – distant banging and unintelligible shouts. “I was told,” the man said, carefully, “That if I picked up the telephone, I’d be put into contact with a Mr. Talbot who could help me. I’m calling from the Fifth Precinct. Superintendent Burke speaking.” 

 _Police._ Victor straightened, cleared his throat. “Victor Talbot, with the Division of Investigation. Speaking.” Or was it Bureau? The department was changing names so frequently that he couldn’t keep up. 

“…Sir!” Relief swelled in Burke’s voice, and in the babble of words that followed. “Oh, thank God. It’s a mess over here, we’re completely overwhelmed. Got reports of gunfire earlier today and rounded up ten men with guns behind that Alveare restaurant, looked like they were gonna shoot up the place. We barely had the cell room for them.”

 _Ohhh wait hold the fuck up._ He’d said ‘Alveare’, Victor _knew_ he’d heard right–

“That’s not all, sir,” Burke exclaimed, with an almost desperate sort of insistence. “A while after that, we got reports of screaming from a building across the street from the same restaurant. Found a stockpile of weapons and twelve men who were completely raving mad, going on and on about how they were burning to death. Somehow my boys dragged them here, but we can’t – we can’t deal with them. There’s no space. I know it’s not your problem, but...”

The onslaught of information hit Victor like a bullet to the teeth, and all he could think was how the _fuck_ had his department not gotten wind of whatever the hell this was. Two major operations busted within the immediate vicinity of the Alveare was news that he absolutely should not be hearing about first from a dinky little precinct way over its head.

“Oh – that’s right,” Burke said, and the sinking feeling in Victor’s gut would have dragged a lesser man to his knees. “The fella who told me to try the telephone – he said that you’d probably want to know that we found Miroslav Leskovar’s business card in one of the perp’s pockets.”

Foreboding became doom, and Victor bit back disappointment and rage and wished that he wasn’t so fucking _unsurprised_. He wished that his heart had stopped from shock, that his jaw had dropped, but his feet remained grounded and his hands remained steady. He talked where he should’ve been remembering how to breathe. “From the sound of it, it _is_ my problem, Superintendent,” he said, far too easily. “We’ll take them off your hands _and_ take over the investigation, starting now. Expect me in fifteen minutes or thereabout.”

Burke’s explosive sigh nearly did Victor’s eardrum in. “You’re saving our hide,” he said, full of nothing but sheer gratitude – and then, in a rush, he added, “Don’t hang up.”

The curious tonal shift from gratitude to something queerly plaintive was more than odd, and Victor didn’t know what to make of it. Good. He’d had enough of being unsurprised for the time being, and he closed his eyes and welcomed the electric anticipation buzzing at his fingertips.

“That fella I mentioned,” Burke began, and Victor pictured him scratching his scalp in faint puzzlement, “He wanted me to deliver a message for you before the call ended. Real particular about the way he wanted me to say it, too. I don’t get it myself, but maybe it’ll mean something to you. Uh…” He cleared his throat. ‘You have a visitor waiting for you. She’s come back–’”

““–She’s come back,”” said the rookie, at the exact same time, and Victor’s eyes flew open–

““–Says she wants to see you in person,”” the Rookie/Burke continued, matching rhythm for syllable for cadence, doublespeech coming from behind Victor’s back and directly in his ear in eerie harmony, ““Miss Ennis, that is.””

Victor _choked_.

““Mr. Talbot?”” A feminine voice had replaced the rookie’s, words perfectly mirroring Burke’s gravelly delivery despite the abrupt transition. Victor turned reluctantly, inch-by-inch, heart beating quick in his chest at the first sign of a feminine figure framed in the doorway. She bowed when he faced her, form as crisp as her black business suit, red hair fire-bright under the morning sun.

When she straightened, she met his gaze dead on.

““Mr. Talbot,”” Ennis/Burke repeated, her resolve clashing with Burke’s bewilderment, ““I’ve come to apologize.””

Her mouth snapped shut, eyes blazing with a quiet determination as she awaited his reaction. The sudden silence after surround-sound was disorienting enough on its own, but even more so was Burke’s voice crackling to life by his ear without Ennis’ voice shadowing it.

“That’s it,” Burke said, quietly. “That’s all there was.” 

The call ended.

It was several seconds before Victor numbly returned the receiver to its cradle. He had not yet broken eye contact with Ennis. _She’s waiting for you to say something_ , his brain supplied, but when he opened his mouth, the words would not come.

For once in his life, the words would not come.

 

 

 

 

Several blocks away, one of New York’s countless secretaries leant against the exterior wall of the Fifth Precinct and exhaled smoke rings, staring up at the clouds drifting overhead with singular attention. His serenity was such that the rare few who bothered to look his way twice assumed he had been standing there for some time, absorbed in his own little world. Had they known of the ongoing chaos playing out in the building behind him, they might have marveled at the juxtaposition.

“Mm… Even after all that, I never once crossed his mind. At times like this, I can’t help but wonder if the blame lies more on his own character failings rather than the strength of my initial impression… Well, no matter.”

As he mumbled to himself, he brought the cigarette to his lips once more. This time, the smoke he exhaled took the shape of rectangular glasses – an extraordinary display by human standards, but most of the humans who passed him by had no reason to look at an ordinary secretary twice, and the feat went unnoticed.

“ _His own failings_ , was it? No… Victor may be Victor, but this time it’s not his fault he’s in over his head. A puzzle cannot be completed if one does not have all the pieces, after all.”

The secretary puffed his cigarette in silence for a while, idle thoughts of his coworkers and still-unfinished paperwork flitting through his mind. When images of Victor and Ennis once again surfaced, he resumed voicing his thoughts from where he’d left off, as if there’d never been a break in the first place. There was no particular reason for him to voice his thoughts out loud – save for the fact that he enjoyed the sound of his own voice – but he spoke with such confidence that one could have very well believed there was an invisible audience hanging on to his every word.

“Yes… All the questions Victor has – and those he has not – any outsider would be wondering the same. Even the insiders who have been involved from the beginning do not yet fully comprehend the events that have taken place. ‘What happened in the time leading up to Agent Langsley’s call?’ ‘Why were the men across the street noticed and arrested only after their alleyway compatriots had already been taken away?’ ‘What was Maiza thinking?’ ‘Why is he in police custody?’

“To know the answers at this stage, one would either have to be omniscient or a master of time itself…or be acquainted with those who are. If Rosetta were only available, perhaps she might have been able to shed some light on the situation. Hm? No, I wouldn’t say I’m omniscient. What would a humble secretary such as I know in comparison to a federal agent? And even if I _were_ omniscient, Victor would still be as oblivious as ever. What obligation have I to divulge information to someone who has yet to truly recognize my being?”

Though the secretary’s face remained deliberately inscrutable, those who knew him intimately would have picked up on the faint petulant tone to his words. With the one person who knew him best currently in police custody, the emotion went unnoticed and unremarked. Suddenly weary of talking, and vaguely dissatisfied, the secretary did not deign to speak again. Instead, he simply folded himself back into the fabric of the universe and faded out of existence, neatly and without fuss.

If Victor had only thought of him in a different sense – no, not as the shapeless demon, but as Maiza’s friend – then perhaps he would have come to realize there was one more being who could have provided the answers he so desperately sought. But he hadn’t, and in the planck-year-eon it took for the entity to shed the final residue of his treasured human form, it realized that _this_ bothered it more than its lack of impression did.

The universe wrinkled, smoothened itself, and began to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait.
> 
> On my second flight home back in December, I opened up my laptop to start writing Chapter 7. I'd spent the whole taxi ride to the airport and the first flight thinking about potential ways Chapter 7 might start, so you can imagine my surprise when I loaded the document and found a little over three hundred words of it already written - the same three hundred words that open up the chapter as you see it now. It wasn't just surprise that I'd completely forgotten writing it, either; I was genuinely startled at how the chapter begins. _Victor was in a scowling sort of mood..._ and the succeeding paragraph completely threw me for a loop, since all the potential beginnings I'd mulled over in the taxi and first flight were entirely different. In the end I stuck with the beginning as is, because to be quite honest, it's a much better opening than anything I'd come up with in that damn taxi.
> 
> The "Fenian Agitators" from Victor's past belong to the [Fenian Brotherhood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenian_Brotherhood), an Irish-American organization that wanted Ireland independent and out of English hands. As you can imagine, the movement also operated on Ireland and British turf. Uprising attempts were made, several Fenian raids into Canada were organized, and many Fenians and unaffiliated Irish-Americans alike harbored [strong anti-English sentiments.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglophobia#Anglophobia_in_the_Irish-American_community)
> 
> If you don't recall, Superintendent Veld was Edward's superior and a member of Szilard's coterie in 1930. He tried to convince Edward to join him and become an "ascended being," but Edward was having none of it and smashed the bottle of elixir in front of his very eyes. There's nothing in canon that suggests Veld still has allies within the police force, but I do think it'd be interesting if that were the case. 
> 
> Today's 5th Precinct houses Chinatown and Little Italy, and since Edward was clearly working to some extent in Little Italy territory in 1935, I suppose that Burke could very well be Veld's replacement. (Or a replacement of a replacement).


	8. The Beforemath

**11:15 AM          The Alveare**

“Damn it…” 

Kitchen door, row of barstools, wall, row of barstools, repeat. 

Door, barstools, wall, barstools. Redbrowngoldblack. Past the stage for a change.

“Goddamnit…” Bar, again. Red against red. Red until red became blood became wine became Ennis’ hair and Firo remembered that he was Firo Prochainezo, felt copper lips and sore knuckles and aching feet that had been treading red into red while Maiza and Ennis…

While they… 

Frustration and helplessness subsumed him in one scorching wave and he was gone again, little more than a bundle of nerves pacing blood-colored rivulets into a carpet because that was all he could  _do_ —

“That’s enough of  _that_ , thank you very much.”

A firm hand gripped his wrist, tugging once, and just like that – Firo came up for air. His teeth tasted of blood and skin, never mind what was left of his bottom lip, somehow he’d had grit in his eyes all along and not even noticed, but why did his hand feel…?

When he realized, he flushed and looked away, down at the blues and whites of Seina’s dress and apron that were a welcome change of color. There was no way Seina could have missed the way Firo’s arm was shaking, like he was a newbie associate all over again who wasn’t as tough as he oughta be or something. Not Seina, who’d cared after Firo and the other associates and whipped them into shape in equal measure.

A lump sprang to his throat.

“Moving around to burn off all that nervous energy is one thing, but I’ll not have you flattening the carpet while you’re at it,” Seina said, releasing his wrist. For the first time, Firo took full stock of the Alveare carpet – the proof of his existence worn into a burgundy trail winding about the tables, walls, and bar in serpentine fashion. Randy and Pezzo – he’d forgotten the executives were  _there_  – were following the tread on the other side of the restaurant as other capos looked on, evidently making a pastime out of figuring out Firo’s movements.

Firo pressed a clammy palm to his forehead, let his fingers curl around his bangs. Tugged. “Seina, I… I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“That much was obvious.” Firo flinched, but Seina shook her head, steered Firo over to the nearest chair, and forced him into it with a strong push on both shoulders. “For crying out loud, any paler and you’ll turn into a vampire. Stay put while I fetch some tea, or so help me I’ll have you cleaning the storage rooms for old times’ sake.”

She was off in a swish of blue and white, and Firo was left to stare down at a sea of red once more.  _Storage rooms, huh…_  He scratched at the undersides of his wrist – how long had it been since he last wore clothes that couldn’t fit him? How long had it been since he’d been a scrappy thirteen year old, wearing a jacket whose sleeves dwarfed his hands and made to sweep the storage room under Seina’s watch? The first time he’d had a sneezing fit from the dust, and Ronny and Maiza couldn’t help but– 

–laugh–

An earthy aroma had him looking up before he could lose himself in the memory; he hadn’t noticed the blue-and-white of Seina’s attire this time. Once she was sure Firo was looking at her, she set down two cups of dandelion tea, paused, and rapped him on the head with the back of her spoon. His hand flew to the sore spot out of instinct. “Hey, what was that for?”

Seina plopped herself down into an opposite seat at the table, shaking the spoon mock-threateningly his way. “Now look here,” she said, in the scolding tone of a mother, “I know you’re worried about Maiza and Ennis, but it’s only been a couple hours since Ennis left and she knew what she was getting into when she did. And goodness knows you’re not the only one here who’d like to have them back safe and sound, so I’m frankly sick of seeing you acting like it. You’re going to drink some tea, and if you’re going to mope you’re going to mope at  _me_ , got it?”

Moping? Him? Self-centered? Him?  _Him_ , moping? Him– 

“Fi _ro_ ,” Seina sang, voice somewhere between honey-sweet and hard reckoning, “ _Get moping_.”

“U-uh-uhm,” Firo scrambled for his tea like a man possessed, never mind that the porcelain was hot to the touch.

Seina took a sip of her own tea and added, “Not that I see  _why_  you’re moping all of a sudden. After all, wasn’t it also only a couple of hours ago when you and the rest of the boys took out those lousy no-goods? Seems to me you had plenty of bravado then.”

“Yeah, well…” Firo let out a long sigh, cooling the tea and his head in equal measure. “That was before.”

“Before?”

He sipped at the tea, reoriented himself around roast herbs and warm umbers. “Before it was over,” he said, helplessly. Paused. Sipped again. “It was easy not to mope when I had something to  _do_ , okay, I mean – when Ronny got all of us together and said there were some dips targeting the Alveare, that was great. Uh, not like  _that_ , Seina, c’mon, gimme a break here. I’m talking great as in I could keep busy looking forward to chipping in effort. And knocking in a few teeth, sure. But then…”

Shaking his head, he set the half-full cup back on its saucer and scrubbed at the grit he still hadn’t gotten out of his eye. “Five minutes after the police took those guys away… Well, you saw him same as I did.”

Ronny had been all but  _cryptic_  when he’d come back from – whatever he’d been doing. Given a shifty-eyed glance over at Molsa and muttered “it’s done” before heading over to the telephone to call in Maiza’s kidnapping with the barest of nods in Firo’s direction. There hadn’t even been a chance to ask him  _why_  he was chummy all of a sudden with the feds before he was gone again. No explanation, nothing.

But before that, there’d been… “Ennis.” Firo muttered his roommate’s name without thinking, cricking his neck and shoulders as if the motions would ease the invisible weight upon them. “Even though I know where she’s gone and why, I can’t stop worrying. I just  _can’t_.” He was more worried about her than he was about Ronny if he was being honest with himself, but Ronny was  _Ronny_  when it came down to it. Firo wasn’t so much concerned with whether or not Ronny was in danger as he was with what Ronny was up to. 

Seina clucked her tongue. “Really… You ought to know better than anyone by now that she can look after herself.”

Shame had Firo reaching for his cup again, and even after downing the rest of the lukewarm tea his throat remained stubbornly closed up. “I–I oughta. I know I oughta. I just…Czes told me…”

 _Czes_  had filled him in on everything he’d missed back when he’d been doing his stint in Alcatraz some months back, including how Czes and Ennis had been paid a personal visit by a certain immortal. And  _Randy_  had filled him in on just how uncomfortable his two roommates had looked the entire time.

“If she’s meeting who I think she’s meeting,” he muttered, glaring into his empty teacup, “I hope she gives him hell.”

❖ 

**10:30 AM               The Hideout – Exterior**

“I’ve come to apologize,” Ennis said – Just Ennis, this time – and all of Victor’s bravado vanished.

“I–Well, that’s–” Her eyes were too earnest. He couldn’t look at them, couldn’t. Closing his own eyes didn’t help, because then he saw Prochainezo’s disgust-filled expression back when he’d blatantly used Ennis against the kid. Saw the utter pain in Ennis’ expression back when he visited the Alveare. Saw his own earnestness from two centuries back, and shuddered.

Instead, he let his gaze drift past Ennis and toward Edward, who was craning his neck over their way with unsubtle expectant curiosity. “That is, I already heard from Langsley,” Victor said, choosing every word – every  _syllable_  – as carefully as he could for once. “He said you didn’t…know about this one. This hideout, I mean. And that’s…”  _We’ve found several bodies rolling around in Quates’ old hideouts, kid._ “…That’s not your fault, right? It shouldn’t be a surprise that he didn’t trust you enough to tell you all his secrets.” 

“Mr. Talbot–”

Heart in throat, he cut her off as he swept past her and out of the booth. “Look, can’t we do this some other time?” 

Shit, why’d she have to show up out of the blue and catch him off-guard like this? It’d been one thing when he did the same thing to her back in December, but now…  _Shit_. The whole damn debacle reeked of December. He cleared his throat. “All right, listen up!” Edward, Donald, and Bill all looked over his way, as well as the Rookie who’d followed him out of the building.

Good.  _Good_. Gotta appear busy. “New orders. Agent Noah, go to the Fifth Precinct and arrange transport for twenty-two suspects to our holdings. Superintendent Burke will fill you in. Sullivan, I want you to go check out the building opposite the Alveare – it’s Leskovar property, and from what I’ve just heard it sounds like some of his men were holding a stakeout in one of the offices. Brown, you hold down the fort here in the meantime. Any questions?”

All three senior agents not so conspicuously looked him up and down, shot each other glances and said as one, “No, sir.”

Mild approval and dissatisfaction quarreled within him for a good few seconds, and he grit his teeth. “Then what are you waiting for, huh? Move out!” 

And move out they did. Donald re-entered the building, while Bill and Edward each headed off in separate directions to find their respective requisite transports. Victor was left alo–

“No, Mr. Talbot,” Ennis said, by his side. She’d followed him–! “I’m afraid we can’t do this some other time.”

Victor froze, but stubbornly looking forward did him no good; Ennis deliberately moved to stand in front of him, and met his gaze whether he liked it or not. He very much did  _not_. Those damned eyes of hers–had they been the last things  _he’d_  seen too? Had they been as piercing then, even in their emptiness? “I’m sorry about the hideout, that’s true. But I’m also sorry for–for–” Now  _she_  was the one looking away, but only for a second. Hesitation overruled by some long-decided upon resolve.

“Please, Mr. Talbot. Please – let me do this. For both of us.”

❖

**11:10 AM                   Interrogation Room**

Victor would’ve dawdled outside the interrogation room for five minutes or more had he not told himself he was being a disgrace.  _Don’t think. Don’t think. You’re a man of the law. Focus on your damn job_. His hand trembled as he yanked the door open and trembled as he yanked it shut behind him.  _Nothing personal. Right now, your talk with Ennis may as well have never happened._

He had to hold his breath anyway as he took his seat opposite Maiza, though the metal table between them could’ve been a gulf for all Maiza was aware of him. Maiza’s head had dipped toward his chest, his hands hidden from view under the table but most assuredly cuffed from the way his shoulders were stiffly hunched forward. His coat hung over the back of his chair and his hat lay on the table, but of course the rips in his sleeves were just as unstained as those in his discarded attire. How long had he been dozing, in this clammy little room? How could he  _doze_ , when he was in the heart of enemy territory?

The scrape of Victor’s chair against the floor was either louder than he’d thought or Maiza’s doze lighter than he’d appreciated, for Maiza’s head jerked up at the sound while his shoulders tensed further still and remained tense until he took full stock of his red brick-and-concrete surroundings. When his gaze finally settled on Victor, he frowned. “Is something wrong, Victor?” 

It was one statement – just four little words– and everything about Maiza’s delivery and Maiza himself had Victor’s blood boiling. The dark circles under his eyes, the holes in his hat, every invisible injury on his skin.  _You’re too good of a criminal to be asking something like that, goddamnit. You’re too good of a man even after all this time…_

“That’s rich, coming from a criminal,” Victor snorted, and he folded his hands onto the table like it’d stop them from shaking. It did, thankfully, and the relief that swept through him was embarrassingly sharp. “Now, I know you already went and told Langsley what happened but guess what? I don’t care. You’re going to tell me everything top to bottom, right here and now. Oh, and before you get any bright ideas…we’re interrogating Ennis over in the next room.”

Any rube would interpret that as a threat, and sure enough, Maiza straightened in his seat and narrowed his eyes in alert suspicion for the first time since Victor’d walked in. “Victor–”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Victor sneered, heart pounding jazz against his sternum. “She followed me–hrrhrmmmm she’s voluntarily giving us information. The two of us had a real heart to bleeding heart about you on the way over, you know. Says she won’t leave until you do,  _tch_.”

❖

 **1:30 PM           The Alveare**  

Seina had managed to keep Firo company for an hour before he couldn’t take it any more and went to pace in the courtyard out back. He was on his fifty-third lap when Lia rushed out to meet him, pausing just long enough to adjust her cheongsam and tuck her heel back into her shoe before exclaiming, “Firo, Firo – Ennis is back!”

Firo ended up tripping over the cobblestones himself in his haste to go see, though Lia caught him just in time, and the two of them hurried back inside the restaurant together. He couldn’t help the relieved grin that spread across his face when he finally caught sight of  _her_ , encircled by various Martillo executives by the bar and fielding questions from all sides.

Well, he couldn’t help but add his voice to the din. “Ennis, hey!”

The smile she offered him was small but sincere, and he flushed as he quickly took in the state of her clothes. No rips or tears as far as he could tell, but that wasn’t entirely reassuring. Emotional wounds didn’t tend to leave visible evidence, after all. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said, but words weren’t enough to convey just how much he meant it. Not like he could just…take her hands in his, though.  _No rips, no tears_ , but– “They didn’t hurt you or nothing, did they?”

“No,” Ennis said, and she hadn’t stopped to think about it so that had to be a good sign, right? “No, I’m fine.”

“And Maiza?” He’d meant to say,  _That’s great_ , but Maiza’d been on his mind for so long the questions just rolled off his tongue. “What about him? Didja see him? How’d he look?”

Her smile turned pensive as she had to stop and think about it – and he hoped to hell that wasn’t a  _bad_  sign. “I…only caught a glimpse of him,” she offered, finally, and Firo and the rest of the Martillos leaned forward in anticipation. “I’d been waiting to head down the stairs when they brought him up. He seemed tired, and there were holes in his suit…”

Muttering broke out amongst the other executives. A vision of Maiza’s pale, pinched face from the poisoning incident swam in front of Firo’s eyes, dreadful and foreboding, and his throat seized up–

“So nothing unexpected, then,” said Molsa, and Firo’s head whipped up and over to the bar so fast that it was a mercy his neck didn’t snap. Molsa had perched himself on one of the stools without drawing anyone’s attention away from Ennis – he must have done, because surely Firo would have noticed him, otherwise – and he appraised Ennis with a cool gaze and raised eyebrows. “Now, Ennis…. Were you able to accomplish what you set out to do, at least?”

There was the smallest of pauses – too short for Firo to start worrying, and too long for it to be accidental – and Ennis gave him a firm nod.

 

**10:47 AM                 Federal Automobile**

Victor had refrained from looking at Ennis ever since he had wedged himself into the left-hand passenger seat seven minutes ago. He had yet to say anything either, save for a few clipped directions when the ‘rookie driver’ had taken a wrong turn, but Ennis was somehow unconvinced that he found the grimy brick and dull concrete passing by his window as visually engaging as he made it out to be. It was true that all she could see of his face was his jaw – stiff with tension, all this time – but if she could only catch a glimpse of his face, she was sure his eyes would betray where his mind really was.

She had claimed the right-hand passenger seat for the sake of leaving space between them, and she had been silent all this time like him...but there was only so much time she could afford to be considerate of his feelings. She’d  _been_  considerate, and she’d done nothing but considered his feelings for hours upon days upon weeks.

When she had considered all that had transpired in the Alveare, she had come to accept that he had been considering  _her_  feelings as well.

And when she considered Firo’s words from five years ago, considered Firo and his kindness and his outrage, considered what Victor’s friend had taught her with his morality and his feelings and his  _humanity_  – she was sure that did not excuse his actions at the time. All the complicated emotion on his face when he had met her gaze and opened his mouth to speak, all the careful blankness in his expression when he  _did_  speak – none of that excused the incarcerations of two of her dearest friends. She could not –  _would not_  – forgive him using herself and Isaac against Firo and Firo against her, would not forgive him Isaac and Firo’s suffering. She would not forget the fear in Czes’ expression. She would not forget  _her_  fear.

She had spent too long being used to overlook her family being used. She had not murdered Victor’s friend for his humanity to go to waste. She had not learned of humanity so that she could condone others  _excluding_  her from it.

But she  _had_ murdered Victor’s friend – and she had not learned of humanity so as  _to exclude herself_  from it. She most certainly had not learned of humanity so that she could deny it to others.

Ennis closed her eyes. Focused on the thrum of the engine, the stench of gasoline and aroma of new leather. There was no driver’s wheel beneath her hands, but she could imagine it just as well. How many hours had she spent in the Rookie’s place, driving Mas– driving Szilard up and down the East Coast? Silence had been her refuge then – stifling, oppressive silence – but from what she and the alchemist both had seen of Victor’s personality, it likely brought him more discomfort than relief.

She was not used to breaking silences, least of all in automobiles – but she was still not quite used to being a  _passenger_  in automobiles, for that matter, and that had already come to pass. No longer chauffeur, but not – not Szilard, either, regal and alone in his backseat kingdom. Just Ennis. Just  _her._  

“I wrote you letters,” she said, looking straight ahead rather than to her left. Even if she was breaking the silence, she could at least give him this in a way of a small courtesy as a means of easing him into conversation. “I never mailed any of them, in the end. I think… I never could settle on the ‘right’ way to apologize.”

She folded her hands in her lap as she talked, sunlight flickering across skin and cloth as they sped past buildings and trees and market stalls and people and pigeons with histories and loves and lives – oh, she was not Szilard (she was Firo now but  _not Firo’s_ , as he reminded her always) but she had driven him down these very streets. How much of the world had passed by his window unnoticed? How much of the world had _she_ closed herself off to, in the process of closing off Szilard?

“It wasn’t that I had never apologized before. Szilard Quates was not a man who apologized, but a man who had others apologize on his behalf. Those apologies were…sparse, as the general principle irritated him – but sometimes, they were unavoidable. If those apologies were empty because he did not mean them…then those which I delivered when I lacked the emotional capacity to  _give_  them meaning were doubly so.”

Now,  _now_ , she shifted to look at him. His jaw had clenched tighter, the muscle in his neck tauter – and his head remained very, very still. What did  _he_  see, outside his window? Surely not the world…not the  _present_  one, at least. She closed her eyes and summoned one of the alchemist’s memories, when he had been nineteen and examining his face for nascent signs of a mustache or beard. He never had grown one, in the end. 

“I still have much to learn about emotions and having emotions, but…it must be a bitter thing for you to hear me say, ‘I have come to apologize for devouring your friend…’ when it is  _because_  I devoured your friend that I can  _mean_  an apology at all.” 

When Ennis had lacked emotions, she came to understand through observation just how painful the truth could be simply by virtue of being  _true_. Objectively, her statement was a true one, and that was  _precisely_  why Victor flinched for the first time since they had entered the car. He remained facing away, but – he had flinched all the same. 

“In devouring your friend, I gained the capacity to regret having done it in the first place. Had I sought you out and apologized at the time, it would have been a sincere apology…but I did not, and my letters remained unsent. My apology now…is one facilitated by your friend, but it comes in the wake of a five-year period in which I made friends of my own. During that time, I witnessed them cheer on my behalf, and suffer on my behalf. I have experienced their kindness firsthand, and seen them upset for me firsthand – and I have come to realize that every pain they endured on my account was voluntarily shouldered, and every kindness toward me sincere.”

Firo’s cold outrage, and Firo’s warm generosity. Maiza spurning Victor partly on her behalf, and Maiza welcoming her despite her link to his nemesis. Seina and Lia thanking her for her hard work, despite that being her  _function_. Czes’ upset when he’d been impotent to stop her kidnappers, and Czes’ peace whenever the two of them went out on their strolls. 

“As I am now… I believe I not only understand what pain you must have felt at the news and why you felt that pain, but that I could come to feel it myself should I lose any one of the friends that I have made.”

About half a year after the events of November 1930, Ennis had dreamed of the day she had injected Dallas and his cohorts with the failed product – only it had been Firo, Isaac, and Miria whom she had handcuffed, and it had been Isaac instead of Scott who had been devoured, and Victor instead of Szilard who had done the devouring.

Victor went on to devour Miria once she started to cry, and when he devoured Firo – shouting himself hoarse with hatred, breaking his own wrists in an attempt to escape the cuffs – he had met Ennis’ eyes, and she had woken with Firo’s name on her lips and an ache in her heart that she had later concluded was fear.

The feeling had unnerved her at the time, but it paled in comparison to the tempest of regret and pain and grief she had felt back in December. She was no longer as emotionally inexperienced as she was  _back then_ , but she had no doubt that a gulf between her and humanity remained. If her feelings were already potent to  _her_ , then did that mean that the full intensity of Victor’s human emotions were on another level entirely?

“The difference between the me that devoured your friend, and the me that sits by you now is enormous, but she and I are not separate entities. I have no intention of divorcing myself from myself. Mr. Talbot…the resentment you must feel toward me was clear from our encounter in the Alveare, but if you resent the me-that-was as well… Please, allow me to sincerely apologize on her behalf, as she could not have done so on her own.”

Objectively, her statement was a true one – and her past self would not have been able to understand why the truth made her eyes sting so. She was not entirely certain  _she_  understood why, even after all this time. “She– _I_ –was aware of what I was doing, but not…holistically aware. I reacted on reflex, seized his head on reflex, and thought,  _I want to eat_  as a deliberate, conscious act according to my Master’s orders. To kill, and to watch others be killed – none of that had any significance until Afterwards. So resent me, but  _understand_  me – and me-that-was.”

Ennis may not have been used to _breaking silences_  or  _being a passenger_ , but she was also not used to speaking to such lengths – especially when it was otherwise silent. She was still more of a listener rather than speaker over at the Alveare, and conversation and music were ever-present as ambient noise there.

At home with Firo and Czes she had grown somewhat used to such things, but Firo and Czes were  _family_. Victor had been the alchemist’s friend, and he was a self-professed friend of Maiza’s – but that did not make him  _her_  friend. She might have doubted that he was actually listening to her were it not for his clenched jaw and curling fingers, and in some ways it was more intimidating to actually be listened to – for others to actually value what she had to say – than to be ignored or dismissed. 

(She would not ever return to that time. She never, ever wanted to be reduced to that position again.)

Ah, but it was precisely that inexperience which made talking for so long so  _difficult_ , no matter how glad she was for the opportunity. She’d leaned across the empty middle seat a little, put her weight on her left hand – when had she done that? Why had she done such a thing? Was she trying to be imploring? Assertive? Emphatic? Had she tried to close some invisible gulf between them? “Mr. Talbot,” she murmured. “Please.”

Victor did not reply, though he did stir in his seat. Whether he stirred on purpose or on accident was her guess to lose, so rather than guess she stuck to tangible observations. He’d slumped back into the leather ever so slightly, and his fists uncurled just a tad be _fore_  his jaw finally loosened. 

“…It’s true that I resented you.”

Ennis winced, but she’d expected as much – and Victor kept talking before she could process it. “Resented, past tense. It’s also true that I still feel it, from time to time… but I never  _blamed_  you for his death. That’s probably hard to believe, but it’s another truth.”

He finally looked away from the window to bow his head, taking a new interest in studying his clasped hands. “Do you understand what I mean by that? That I could resent you without blaming you? I resented you for essentially murdering my friend, but I saw Szilard as the one ultimately responsible. Knowing it is one thing. Feeling it is another.”

Emotion twisted his expression – more than one, but she couldn’t place any of them before his expression smoothened into one that was carefully blank. Just like the one he’d shown her back in the Alveare. “If you’re worried I’m going to arrest you anyway, I meant it when I said I’d treat your crimes as if they’d never happened. And you’d better not be thinking I want to devour you either. It’s like I said to Prochainezo – it wouldn’t solve a damn thing.” 

“That’s…”  _Does he really think that’s all I came here for? Is he testing me?_  “Mr. Talbot, I didn’t come here out of fear. I thought I made that clear enough.”

Victor  _looked_  at her for the first time, really  _looked_  at her, in an appraising, suddenly bright-eyed way he’d never looked at her before. “Let me ask you this: do you  _want_  me to accept your apology?”

Ennis brought a knuckle to her lips as she mulled it over. She had spent most of her time crafting the apology and the rest wondering what she would do if he rejected the apology rather than what she wanted to happen. It was a deeply engrained mindset from Before – to only ever think about what needed doing and what  _could_  happen – but even after she’d devoured the alchemist she’d still found it more practical to think in concretes and consider concrete scenarios. Factoring in her feelings was not only irrelevant and potentially dangerous, it was futile. What good would factoring in her feelings have done her, when it would not have changed her overall circumstances? 

If she hadn’t thought about it, she might have said yes – but she  _had_  thought about it, so she might as well answer honestly. “I…don’t know. I hadn’t realized until now that I didn’t. Should I?”

Victor shook his head, lifted a hand to scrub at his face. “That’s not me for decide, is it? You’re supposed to be thinking for yourself now, so work it out for yourself.”

He was – absolutely right. Trepidation trickled down her spine like icewater – how often had she fallen back into old patterns, passively waiting for Szilard to think for her when he was long since dead?

“And one other thing… You think you could forgive and forget how I treated your friends back in winter?”

“No.” The firmness and immediacy with which she’d refused surprised her, but Victor’s answering crooked grin surprised her even more. He sunk into his seat and folded his arms, looking back toward the window as he had before.

“… _Good_.” 

 

**1:35 PM            The Alveare**

Ennis balled her hands into fists, lowered her gaze. “I’m still learning, so I can’t say for certain that I know how  _he_  felt. Maybe I hurt him more than anything else in the end…but I had to do it, no matter what.”

❖

**11:35 AM                  Interrogation Room**

“I told you already,” Maiza said, and Victor absolutely begrudged the exasperation that had crept into Maiza’s voice because  _hello_ , this was an interrogation, not a book report. He’d have Maiza go over whatever he wanted as many times as he wanted. “My wrists were bound until I dislocated them. For whatever reason, his subordinates deliberately went against orders to amputate – and yes, there  _were_  orders.”

Okay, sure, but that only made the sheer stupidity of what Maiza was telling him that much worse. “Look, Leskovar saw himself as some sort of mastermind, right? Going on and on about how he wasn’t some senile geezer like his cohorts, playing the long con, stickler for details, yadda yadda – after all that, he didn’t bother to check if your hands weren’t sawed off? Well  _excuse me_  if I find that hard to believe.” 

Maiza sighed, his cuffs clinking with the movement. “Miroslav Leskovar was…an intelligent man. Crafty, even. One might say that hubris was his downfall, but I believe his fatal flaw was…something  _more_. Something–”

Eh? Victor hadn’t interrupted him, why the sudden silence? “Something?” Victor prompted.

“Something–” Again, Maiza  _cut himself off_. “Victor,” he said, after a quizzical pause, “There’s someone knocking. Don’t you…?”

 _…Hear it?_  Victor sprung to his feet – how long had he failed to notice such a thing? – and scrambled over to the door, privately glad for the distraction. He opened it so abruptly that the rookie outside accidentally knocked on his chest.

“S-Sir!” The rookie flushed crimson, cleared his throat, shuffled a few steps back. “We’ve got agents reporting in.”

“…Understood. Thanks, I’ll be there in a minute.” Victor looked over his shoulder at Maiza, tired and tattered, and grimaced. “Lucky you, we’ve only been at it for…” Wait, shit, how long had they been at it for? Forty minutes? Fifty? He checked his watch, and his stomach roiled. “…Twenty minutes and you already get to have a break. In fact, you’re in such a sorry state that I’ll give you twenty minutes to recover from  _those_  twenty minutes… I’m sure this rookie’ll be enough to keep an eye on you, right?”

He patted the rookie on the shoulder twice as he passed – how young was this kid, anyway? Enough to be a  _rookie_  rookie – and strode down the corridor, turned left, and immediately slumped against the wall once he was out of sight. Ran a hand through his hair. What the hell kind of bullshit was it when he was more of a mess than the one who’d had his feet amputated, been stabbed and shot at, hadn’t eaten and barely had anything to drink in less than a day?

“…Right,” he muttered. Peeled off the wall.  _Slammed_  his left fist back into concrete, and the pain from two fingers snapping was enough to shock a little sense back into him. “All  _right_ ,” he swore, nice and loud this time, and headed off to field telephone calls.

First up was Edward Noah, whose news mostly amounted to “we’re entering final preparations to escort the men,” along with the confirmation that one of them had been carrying Leskovar’s business card. That, and that all twelve men really were convinced they’d been burning alive. Donald’s call was more of a check-in than anything else, though he found it worth noting that there hadn’t been any unusual phenomena since the telephone incident.

When Bill called a few minutes later, Victor accepted the receiver and hoped to hell Bill’s news would be just as free of complications.

 

**11:50 AM                  Hershel’s Office**

“ _Hrm_ , well, that’s the thing, sir.”

Bill Sullivan rubbed at his chin with his free hand, speaking directly into the receiver of Hershel Spelman’s rotary telephone as he gave the office another once over. “From what you’ve told me, the windows should all be blown out and the office all scorched up…but I can’t see any glass shards or charring anywhere. Oh, but there’s plenty of spent cartridges scattered on the carpet and spare ammo, so firearms were definitely present. If Agent Noah is still at the Precinct, have him check and see if Burke’s boys seized them. Otherwise? The office is as clean as a whistle.”

The telephone cord was long enough that he could wander over to the windows overlooking the Alveare while keeping the receiver firmly pressed to his ear, and he briefly contemplated the peaceful-looking storefront before moving around to the other side of the desk. “ _Mmm_ , if Leskovar owns this building… Ah, I don’t think the office’s owner was involved. Call it a gut instinct. I can come back on Monday to speak with him. You know something, if I don’t, I don’t think he’d ever realize anything had taken place here.”

He turned away from the blotting paper and pens on the desk to the painting behind him, simply for the sake of having something new to look at. The blonde woman practically popped off the canvas, a testament to the painter’s skill, and he had to resist the urge to trace the rigid brushstrokes outlining the rose with his index finger. The flashy fabric woven between the woman’s own fingers caught his eye next, as it was the one thing out of place. Bill was no historian, but he’d picked up on a few things when collaborating with the department’s archival team, and something about the fabric’s print and material made it feel…oddly modern.

Though Victor couldn’t see him, he nodded along to Victor’s questions and squinted at the woman’s face. If he tilted his head  _just so_ , her sultry smile seemed almost impish. “No, there’s no reason for you to inspect the place personally, sir. Really, I’ve got it under control….or,  _er_ , there’s not much to ‘control’ in the first place. You’re not missing out on anything. I don’t think there’s much here you’d be interested in.”

With no traces of the lowlifes or their weapons lying around, and no evidence for their claims of warzone anarchy, there really wasn’t much that needed to be done aside from writing up a report and perhaps taking a photograph or two (or maybe not, as Victor always preferred reports to photographs). Well, and all the interviews; Hershel aside, it would be worth interviewing the building’s occupants to see if any of them had interacted with the twelve men or overheard any commotion. 

“Honestly, sir, just send over a couple of the rookies and leave the rest to us. I’ll have them start interviewing people while I look into the building’s documentation.” 

Bill considered the painting for a second or two more, and then shrugged. Victor’s interests in women extended to those who were  _real_ , no matter how pretty painted ones might be. “That’s all for now, sir. Good luck with Avaro.”

❖

**12:30 PM                  Corridor**

Victor ended up extending Maiza’s break by half an hour, giving Maiza time for a simple lunch while he grabbed himself some coffee and went to check on Ennis’ session in one of the nearby rooms. He didn’t much feel up to actually entering, so he ended up waving like an idiot through the door’s tiny window until he caught the junior interrogator’s attention. (The door wasn’t even  _supposed_  to have a window, come to think of it – why hadn’t it been replaced yet like the others? Damn higher ups…)

Once the junior agent joined him in the corridor, he did his best to appear professionally disinterested. “Well? How’s it going?”

The junior agent shrugged. “She’s cooperative, but there’s not much more in the way of new information we’re going to get out of her…or  _have_  gotten out of her, for that matter. Frankly, it’s more about what she  _didn’t_  know than anything else. We’ll write it all up anyway, but I don’t think we need to keep her for much longer.”

Victor thanked the agent for his time, and returned to Maiza’s interrogation room to find Maiza’s lunch had been cleared away and Maiza uncuffed but otherwise just as pale as when he’d left him. In his own chair sat the rookie, who immediately vacated it, ducked his head, and left the room. 

“You  _did_  eat, right?” Victor asked, as he retook his chair. “Because it sure as hell doesn’t  _look_  like you did.”

Maiza absently nodded (wait, was he nodding in response to ‘ did you eat?’, or ‘it doesn’t look like you did’?), but if anything he seemed more out of it than  _before_  the meal. Then he rolled his shoulders, lips quirking like he was laughing at some private joke. “You have my compliments,” he offered, settling back in his seat. “To offer meals to a criminal…the department is more progressive than its reputation belies. This room certainly didn’t telegraph as much.”

“That’s…”  _That’s what? Real funny, ha ha fuckity ha? Damn. Can’t exactly argue the point, can’t agree with it either._ So Victor went the route of barbed sentiment, as unfortunately familiar as it was. “This room, huh… What, you don’t like it? It looks exactly the same as it did when I talked shop with Prochainezo here, so cheer up – you’re seeing the same exact view as he did.”

Naturally, his words didn’t so much  _cheer Maiza up_  as they did aggravate him, and he probably deserved the glare of condemnation that Maiza sent his way. Maybe Carla had been right when she’d once told him that he probably spent more time talking his way out of graves than he did into them. “Oh please, he’s been out of Alcatraz for months now. If I were you, I’d be more concerned that the Alveare was a hop and a skip away from becoming a massacre site this morning than a pithy little grudge like that.” 

He’d delivered the line expecting maybe, y’know,  _alarm_  or  _trepidation_  on Maiza’s face, and he got neither. Had one of the rookies gone against his order to keep Maiza in the dark? “Christ, don’t have a heart attack on me or anything. Your precious gangsters were the target of a two-front assault, and you don’t even bat an eye?” All right, that wasn’t entirely true – Maiza definitely looked  _unamused_ , so Victor would probably be pushing his luck if he quipped something along the lines of  _Does that mean you’re finally getting sick of life with the mob?_.

“I have it on good authority that the Martillos took care of one of the units, while the other’s, uh…plans fell through, so you can rest easy. The Alveare and its occupants are unharmed, and we’re dealing with the scumbag lowlifes as we speak. The shooters, I mean, not the mob. So sorry for the confusion.” 

Maiza closed his eyes. “I see. That’s good to hear.”

Why – wasn’t – he –  _retaliating_? Why? The most Victor had gotten out of him was glares, and he’d already crossed a fair few lines as it was. Was exhaustion really all there was to it? “And what of Leskovar? What happens now?”

“…We have Leskovar,” Victor replied, cautiously. “What are you getting at?”

“I may not have killed Leskovar, but I ‘killed’ him, in a manner of speaking,” Maiza replied, his eyes still shut. “He will testify as much. Am I to be arrested for a crime that never happened, as far as the mortal world is concerned? With Leskovar, at least, there is evidence that he was planning an assault…but his influence is such that I wonder if one can arrest him so easily.” 

They were apt questions, as one could only ever expect from Maiza, and Victor hated that he lacked the answers to match them. Although, come to think of it, being apt didn’t stop the first question from being suspiciously over-cautious. “Fuck, okay, so I admit that I was underhanded with the whole Alcatraz situation, but you don’t seriously think I can arrest you over this…right?”

Maiza cracked open his right eye, arched an eyebrow. “Can?”

“ _Would_ ,” Victor amended, damn it all. “ _Would_  arrest you, damn it, don’t use my own language against me. After everything you went through, we’re just going to say self-defense and call it a day. And actually, yeah – even if I wanted to, I pretty much couldn’t. I mean, Jesus, we don’t exactly have a legal precedent for temporary homicides.” Whether they  _should_  was another matter, and probably a futile debate topic that sometimes kept him up at night regardless.

“Leskovar’s…more complicated. I’m going to have to meet with the Director over his fate, but I’m guessing it’ll partly depend on how the investigation plays out and how much he knows regarding Szilard. For now, you and Ennis are free to go, though it’s not like the situation is really  _over_. I’ll contact you when I have new information.”

“…” Maiza tilted his head back to give the ceiling a wry smile. “Breaking omertà… What will Don Martillo think?”

Victor scowled. “When are you gonna learn that you shouldn’t care about what some mafia boss thinks–”

The world shifted in that moment, blurring into irrelevance as Maiza’s eyes snapped open; he leaned forward, sharp and intense as a lodestar– “Victor,” he said, and Victor’s breath caught in his throat, “We’re  _Camorra._ ”

The world shifted. The light in Maiza’s eyes faded into bone-weary resignation, and it was a wonder that he braced to stand, that he  _stood_ , that he  _was standing_ , and Victor hurried to stand with him. They moved for the door once Maiza had donned his coat and claimed his hat, only for Maiza to come to an abrupt stop a foot away from the doorknob. “Ah… May I ask a favor?”

“…You were complaining about breaking omertà a minute ago, what’s all this about? A mobster’s really asking a favor of a federal employee?” The retort came across more as a joke than chastisement, which was just as well. Victor’s heart hadn’t been it. 

“It would seem so.” Victor couldn’t help but silently tack on ‘ _and as a friend to a friend_ ’ to the end of that one. “If you wouldn’t mind… Could I sleep here, for a little while?” 

 _Huh?_  Bewildered and thrown off-kilter, Victor ended up blurting out a decision before actually making one. “…Uh, sure, I guess.”

“Oh good,” Maiza said, and he swayed  
                                                     tipped  
                                                         crumpled and Victor must have cried out his name, falling to his knees just in time to catch him before he hit the ground. The coldness of the concrete seeped through his trousers as he drew Maiza’s head and shoulders onto his lap, and he had never seen Maiza’s expression so utterly  _slack_  before, not on the _Advena Avis_ , not even in _sleep_ as his face had always been twisted by nightmares whenever Victor chanced upon him.

The eerie peace that settled over Maiza like a shroud chilled Victor far more than the concrete beneath him. He braced Maiza’s torso with his right arm to keep him from slipping and brushed his hair back with his left hand, hunching over his body as if to protect it – or as if to mourn all that had and had never come to pass.

“You dunce,” he hissed, arm tightening like a vise around Maiza’s chest. “How can someone as smart as you be so…so…? How could someone as good as you go and…?”

He shivered, blinked back stinging regrets and fresh old hurts, clung to Maiza like a man starved for touch for old friends for a world where Maiza and Begg hadn’t disappointed him         where Szilard hadn’t betrayed him       where Lucrezia and Zank and Fritz and the rest hadn’t died            where Nile and Denkurō weren’t lost    where he wasn’t so  _alone_           !

“Someday, Maiza... Tell me that someday we’ll have ourselves a drink like we used to. Give me something to look forward to for once. A favor for a favor. We can shake on it.”

Maiza’s face remained slack, and Victor  _placed his right hand_  on Maiza’s forehead.

Nothing. “Fool,” Victor whispered, and he did not move for a long, long time.

❖

**6:30 PM           The Alveare**

It’d been five hours since Ennis had returned home, and five minutes remained until the clock officially marked one full day since Maiza had left the Alveare. She probably wasn’t the only one aware of the unhappy milestone, judging from the way a few of the associates were checking their watches every five seconds, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do but continue to  _wait_  (aside from going home, but nobody seemed inclined to kick off the trend).

“Where’s Ronny?” Firo asked, as he completed yet another loop around Ennis’ table. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question, for that matter, but if asking it helped him in some way, no matter how small, then Ennis would welcome repeats  _ad infinitum_. Still, he sounded even more uncertain than usual. “He should’ve shown up by now.”

“He’ll show up,” said Molsa, certain. He’d moved from the bar to an adjacent table a while ago to play cards with Yaguruma, and Yaguruma nodded his agreement.

Firo completed another loop, though this time he came to a stop by Ennis’ chair. “Yeah, but…what if…?”

Ennis looked up at him with interest – this was a new development. Normally he’d have simply resumed pacing. What had he been about to say?  _What if something’s happened_ , perhaps? Or,  _What if he doesn’t show up in time_?

A cry of delight sounded out from behind the door leading to the honey shop, Every single head turned, every pulse quickened in anticipation, everyone hurried to crowd by the entrance,

and

the universe

 _stirred_.

Ennis was on her feet by the time door swung open, heart soaring as Maiza entered the restaurant with Seina not far behind him in all his worn, welcome glory. He took off his battered hat and fluttered it in greeting, and she thought he might have been about to say something – but then his smile turned hesitant, eyes flitting from face to eager face. On her right, Firo quivered from what she suspected was an admirable effort to not hurl himself in Maiza’s general direction.

A hand fell upon her right shoulder, and she looked up to find Ronny Schiatto by her side. He did not spare her a glance, as his attention was fully fixed on Maiza, but even with the height difference there was no missing the unmistakable warmth in his eyes as he said, “Welcome home.”

Like a dam breaking, or a spell lifting, cheer after cheer followed: “Welcome home, Maiza!” / “Welcome back!” / “ _Maiza_ ,” Firo called, and he rushed forward with Lia and Czes in tow. Ennis caught glimpses of gratitude and aching wonder in Maiza’s expression, but soon lost sight of him as more and more Martillos closed ranks around him.

Ennis let the others move past her, content to hover on the fringes until some of the initial wild excitement had died down. Ronny still had his hand on her shoulder, as it were, and he was still staring at Maiza when she chanced to glance at him. Some of the dewy guilt inside her unstuck at the softness in his gaze, and she murmured, “…Welcome home.” 

Ronny looked down at her, startled, and the smile that crept across his face shone like the light of dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody tell Elmer about this otherwise he might actually kidnap Maiza and return him exactly one day later on the off chance doing so would cause Ronny to smile.
> 
> ...Here's chapter eight, five whole months after Ch7. Real life is...problematic in so many ways, but I don't think the final chapter will take as long. That's right: this is the penultimate chapter! And the longest one to date. I thought Ch5 was going to be the longest at 5k something words, but this one is around 8500....oh dear.
> 
> There are so many things I could say about this chapter. From the behind the scenes (turns out constructing a timeline after you start writing is trickier than you'd think) to characterizing Victor (I revisited LN8 while writing this... I'm treating Victor a little more forgivingly than his debut treats him, but 1934!Victor isn't devoid of sympathetic moments, and 1935-B!Victor is worth taking a look at as well) to characterizing _Ennis_...how I keep picturing Bill as his anime design when the anime basically gave him Donald's design (dammit), heck, the structuring of the chapter as a whole....
> 
> Maybe I'll follow up re: some of that on Tumblr, but for now I'll at least acknowledge that Ch8 finally places THA a little more concretely on the timeline. When I first started writing THA I hoped I could maybe get away with not deciding on when it takes place, but with Leskovar's entrance I cautiously confirmed it as at least post-1933 (when Leskovar alludes to Dallas' scene at the Alveare), and with this...well. Having Ennis corner Victor in Ch7 practically guaranteed this was going to have to be post-1934, and I ended up going all the way and establishing it post-1935 arc. I avoided it for so long because 1935-E still isn't out and...gah, how much is it going to invalidate in the end?
> 
> I'd also like to thank everyone who's commented, because I reread and reread every single comment over the past few months (along with comments on the rest of my fics) and they definitely kept me going. Shoutout to the anon Kia, who left a comment on the fic for the first time on April 30 (four months since the last chapter was out); your kindness was so unexpected/out of nowhere that it gave me that final kick needed to write the rest of the chapter.
> 
> ❖
> 
> **Monday - Hershel's Office**
> 
> When Hershel S. returned from a night of drinking with Carl Digness at the Jane Doe, the last thing he'd expected was to see a federal agent in his office, never mind that said federal agent claimed some mooks had attempted to turn his office into a siege station. He hawed every time the agent hemmed, waiting patiently for the federal agent to reveal that he was pulling his leg and promptly arrest him for aiding and abetting tax fraud.
> 
> The shoe never dropped, and it was only after the federal agent had left him alone with a telephone number and one of the spent cartridges as a souvenir did it cross Hershel's mind that maybe the agent hadn't been pulling any funny business after all. A little paranoia never did any harm, so he spent the next ten minutes combing the place just in case the agent had confiscated a document or two on the sly – starting from the door and ending by his desk – but as far as he could tell, there wasn't a hair out of place.
> 
> Hershel dropped into his chair and idly swiveled about – which he regretted at once, as it only gave him a headache – and then swiveled back. No, he hadn't been seeing things; there was something off about his Strassburg painting, though he couldn't put his finger on it. He scrutinized it for a little while, swiveled his seat once more with the intention of finding the painting's documentation, and then stopped at the sight of an Armagnac on his desk, a single wine glass beside it. _When had that...?_ Maybe last night's brandy had hit him harder than he thought.
> 
> There was a note pinned under the glass, and as Hershel retrieved it he observed the stationary was neither his own nor the one upon which the agent had written the telephone number. The note simply read, _A token of our apologies_. and Hershel puzzled over it for a while before shrugging and uncorking the wine. Meeting a federal agent and not being arrested was cause enough for a celebration, and he poured himself a liberal amount of the Armagnac before swiveling around to face the painting once more.
> 
> Raising the Armagnac up high, he smirked at the Lady and announced, "A toast to our good fortune!" before drinking deeply from the glass.
> 
> The Lady was his prized possession, obtained as payment for a neat little bit of shady tax work he'd done for Nebula a few years back or thereabouts. One of their employees had actually tried to buy it back from him...
> 
> ...But that's another story, for another time.


	9. The Family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Q. “What do you think of Maiza Avaro?”**  
>   
>  “A disappointment.”  
> -His father, 1700
> 
> “Maiza’s great when he’s smiling! That demon had better be keeping his promise. Eh? His childhood? Sure, I hope his smiles back then were more often real than fake, but his smiles _now_ are the only ones that matter, right?”  
>  -Elmer, 1840
> 
> “What the hell is he thinking? Those fucking eyes of his… Shit! He’s more gangster every time I see him! At this rate… I might lose him for good.”  
> -Victor, 1934
> 
> “Well… He’s book smart where I’m street smart…but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect him! Actually…out of all the executives, he’s—uh, never mind.”  
> -Firo, 1926
> 
> “Let me say this: Do not let him drive! That recklessness… What else has he been hiding all this time?”  
> -Nile, 2002 
> 
> “…Lamentable.”  
> -Aile, 1703
> 
> **Q. “What do you think of Ronny Schiatto?”**
> 
> “The name? It’s got a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Hahaha! Oh, you mean _him._ He’s got a lot to learn, for a homunculus who knows everything there is to know.”  
>  -Ronny I, 295 BC
> 
> “He’s high on the food chain for a reason, but…honestly! The man’s as much of a boy as the rest of the Martillos, always asking after my mead. You’d think he’d never experienced a mother’s touch before.”  
> -Seina, 1929
> 
> “Sentimental, for a djinn. For a creature outside humanity, he can sometimes be more human than humans themselves…”  
> -Majeedah, 1541
> 
> “That we’re damn lucky he’s on our side. I just hope he knows that we’re on _his_ —and that goes for Maiza as well.”  
> -Molsa, 1920
> 
> “A cheater. An _ideal_.”  
>  -Huey, 1933
> 
> “The name? **I refuse**! I took it under false pretenses. _Him_? His ego knows no bounds. He’s nonsensical. I don’t understand him. Yet… Even so, I find myself wondering what I will do when he and the others are gone. …Well, no matter.”  
>  -A homunculus, 295 BC  
>    
>  **Q. “What do you think of the Martillo Family?”**
> 
> “Their Molsa Martillo is my countryman, and an excellent example of one at that. The gears in his head are always turning. Everything the Family is today is the result of his efforts.”  
> -Bartolo, 1931
> 
> “T-T-Terrifying! Sure, Mr. Molsa was nice about the tribute, but...the Camorra are no different from the Mafia. Nice doesn’t mean good—I'm living proof. They could kill my friends at any time, just like the Russos. We can’t forget that, ever.”  
> -Jacuzzi, 1935
> 
> “Very, very good people. They became my home when my previous home drove me out. I’m so grateful they found me. …That I found them.”  
> -Lia, 1930
> 
> “Vermin… Those vermin…!!! Taking in and corrupting the youth, like that greenhorn… Does their unscrupulousness know no bounds?!”  
> -A priest, 1927
> 
> “Asking a newcomer to the Family for opinions? Well… They’re lively. In a different way to the cartel, but… not a bad way. I’d like my son Carlos to meet them someday. …Though, maybe I should meet him first.”  
> -Angelo, 2002
> 
> “A…nostalgic diversion, on my part. On Maiza’s…a potential anodyne, perhaps. As I cannot know his future, I suppose I'll be there to witness it for myself.”  
> -Ronny II, 1917

  _The Martillo Family certainly never leaves me bored. It’s a good organization._

_I have superiors that I can respect, colleagues whom I can speak to frankly,_

_and pupils I can enjoy teaching knife fighting to._

_It’s a good environment._ _No, a good...family._

\- Ronny Schiatto,  _1935-D Luckstreet Boys_

* * *

The Martillos held a feast that evening in the privacy of the closed Alveare restaurant, indulging in Lia’s special fried duck, Annie’s pastries, and Seina’s fifth-best honey wine with liberal glee. That they all had work tomorrow went unremarked upon, and a few associates took it upon themselves to continuously ply Molsa with pepper in an effort to ensure no remark would ever be made. Somewhere in-between his fifth scone and seventh honey ale, Randy seemed just about ready to set his own gloved hand on fire—only to mysteriously shy away when Yaguruma asked him if he was finally going to debut that party trick from five years back. Ah, well. Next time.

If the executives-only feasts were minor brouhahas in their own right, then a feast where the entire Family was present might be scientifically classified as a minor ruckus. The Martillos were a small Family, true, but fifty-odd members were plenty enough to generate a buzz in the Alveare beehive. With each passing hour came just a smidgen more chaos, an extra pinch of noise, and that especial energy peculiar to those who have moved past the point of fatigue and into that queerly universal realm of bright-eyed exhaustion.

Most of the associates had fallen into that plane by the second or third hours, with some of the executives following by the fourth, and for these individuals the rest of the night would pass by in a clinquant honey-haze. Theirs was a dreamy little world, golden and warm and magnificently out of time, and if the night Outside was cold and black then they did not know the night at all. They breathed sugar while laughing smoke, lopsided with liquor and dizzy with decadence, content in the eternity that was their present.

From their seats at the periphery of the World, Maiza and Ronny were content to watch that eternity side by side.

Maiza didn’t particularly mind that he was no longer the feast’s cynosure; where the others had long since entered that plane of restless fatigue, he’d remained firmly on the _fatigue_ side of reality. In truth, his body craved rest and quiet that the party’s unyielding radiance could not provide, and he was still as averse to being the life of a party as he had been in his youth. He had remained on the _sober_ side of reality as well, but now found himself fighting the urge to fold his arms on the table in front of him and bury his face in the soft crook of his arm like a child.

What his body wanted didn’t matter—not yet. What mattered was that the Martillos were safe and merry, that the Alveare had remained undamaged, that nobody–

That nobody had _died_.

…He had not devoured Leskovar.

–But he had not delivered him to the Martillos, either. No—he’d _chosen_ not to, in a swift but ultimately clearheaded change of mind that very morning. He’d told Ronny as much, but Ronny—as far as he could tell—had not passed this decision on to the rest of the family.

Across the table, Molsa leaned starboard and muttered something inaudible into Yaguruma’s ear. Though Molsa’s eyes were on Firo—currently clinking glasses with Ennis at a table of their own—and though his eyes were crinkled in amusement, Maiza couldn’t help but flinch. Molsa had not asked him for an official report, not yet. He did not yet know the man to blame for the planned Alveare invasion, and he did not yet know that the government would have the first say as to what sort of _justice_ Leskovar awaited.

None of them yet knew that the man to blame was Maiza himself.

From his seat at the limen of the World, Maiza felt the icy hand of the Outside claw against his back.

When his history with Szilard had endangered the Martillos in 1930, they had forgiven him. No—they had never once thought there was anything that needed forgiving. There had simply been rage that Szilard would hurt one of their own, and simple relief in finding themselves miraculously whole and very much Not Dead. When Maiza had learned the truth of Melvi Dormentaire at Ra’s Lance and Melvi’s designs for Firo, he had been deeply shaken--and _still_ Firo had not blamed him.

The incident with Leskovar would mark the third time that Maiza’s past had come to haunt the Martillos. Yes, the third. There could not have been more. Once was one too many; there _could not have been more._

As Maiza’s hands tightened around his glass, he stole another look at Yaguruma and Molsa on his left: Yaguruma, beaming as Lia topped off his bourbon; and Molsa, nodding appreciatively as an associate cracked a fresh round of black pepper over his—third? Fourth?—helping of duck. His gaze wandered to Randy and Pezzo holding court two tables over, past a table of associates elbow-deep in some bastardized version of poker, and lingered on Firo and Ennis, engrossed in pleasant conversation—and he _knew_.

He knew—had known all along—that the Martillos would forgive him for this, too. Just like he had known he would fight a man with Gretto’s face as the Martillos’ weapon and shield—as a _Martillo_ —long before he knew Melvi’s full story. Not an immortal alchemist. Not as Gretto’s selfish older brother. He _knew_ , beyond doubt, that what the Martillos felt now was exactly what he had felt when he had vowed to aid Firo in saving Ennis. _Ennis is part of Firo’s family, and you, Firo, are a part of ours._

He had known the Martillos would not fault him from the very start of the whole affair.

“Showing your age, Maiza? It’s a little gauche to fall asleep at your own party… but no matter.”

There was a teasing lilt to Ronny’s tone as opposed to actual admonishment, and indeed—when Maiza turned to look at him, he found his friend relaxed and effortlessly at ease in his seat, head resting on his palm and a lackadaisical smirk curling crooked up his right cheek. He had loosened his tie and brown jacket when Maiza’s attention was elsewhere, and the ashtray by his glass had sprouted two more stubs since Maiza had last bothered to check.

Maiza glanced up at the general merry-making, and gave a little laugh and shake of the head. “I wouldn’t call it _my_ party, really…”

“Whose else would it be?” Ronny flicked a slender hand at Seina passing by, and as she refilled his glass, added, “Or perhaps you mean, _not any more_.”

“Well, I…” Maiza cleared his throat unnecessarily and took a sip of wine, all too aware that it was partly instinct that compelled him to argue this point—the instinct of his younger self, bored and uncomfortable and trapped at every party his parents hosted at their estate. Then again, it wasn’t _entirely_ instinct either. “Look at them, Ronny—it’s 1930 all over again. They’re happy for a job well done. That the family and the Alveare came out of this unscathed.” _They’re still reeling from Ra’s Lance—not a mere day’s worth of worry_.

“And you,” Ronny said, into his glass.

Maiza acknowledged this with a tip of his head. “And me,” he allowed, as quietly as he could. “I never said otherwise.”

“Yes,” Ronny agreed. “You never _said_.”

There was a beat in which neither of them said anything at all, and Molsa—having not missed that the two were speaking in the first place—leaned over his plate to take advantage of the fact. “I say, Ronny,” he began, and Maiza tensed a fraction less than he would at his own name, “You _are_ going to explain what happened on your end, aren’t you? With the men across the street. I saw the police having a hell of a time rounding them up—you’d think the devil’d struck the fear into their hearts.”

The cock of Molsa’s right eyebrow was unmistakable, and the answering arch of Ronny’s left eyebrow unavoidable. Maiza, fascinated, leaned into the back of his chair at this most unusual display; it had been usual, these past many years, for Ronny to _defer_ to Molsa’s seniority, not match it. But there was a knowing grin hiding in the wrinkles of Molsa’s face and amusement quirking at the corners of Ronny’s mouth, and this, too, was fascinating.

Their game ended when Ronny’s gaze dipped to his glass, the shifting light of the chandelier overhead softening the angles of his face into something less elegantly sharp. “Of course, sir,” he murmured, the firm nonchalance with which he had spoke to Maiza now humble obeisance. Then he looked at Maiza out of the corner of his left eye. “Reports are no matter to me.” And then, “You already know of my brief rendezvous with Maiza this morning, of course.”

“Oho,” spluttered Yaguruma, a few droplets of honey bourbon clinging to his mustache as he set down his glass with a heavy _thunk_. “A rendezvous?”

“It wasn’t very long, mind,” Ronny said. “Nonetheless—a rendezvous.”

**9:01 AM                   The Hideout – Interior**

When someone came knocking at the trapdoor precisely one minute after Maiza returned the receiver to its cradle, Maiza stood and turned to greet Ronny as he made his way down the stairs. It _was_ Ronny, of course. There could have been no one else.

“Please excuse the mess,” he quipped, though he suspected his smile did not quite reach his eyes. He kept his eyes trained on Ronny regardless, as he was a far more welcome sight than the aftermath of Maiza’s violence. “I wasn’t expecting guests so soon.”

Ronny smirked but did not meet his gaze, too busy taking in the proof of what Maiza had done with his own eyes. Maiza watched them glance over to where Leskovar’s corpse still lay slumped against the wall—at least, he presumed as much. The image had already been burned into his memory, everything from the bone saw lodged in Leskovar’s throat to the wrenched rictus of his mouth in death. No, he had no need to look for himself.

His friend’s attention did not linger on the corpse especially long. It swept past the telephone, the abused bureau, somehow fell to the guards—despite the table surely obstructing Ronny’s vision—and finally flitted up to Maiza’s face. Then, and only then, did Ronny’s smirk soften into an all-knowing smile.

“A long hash of it,” he said, in a voice not much louder than the strained breathing of the guards. “Well, now. Shall we be off?”

Maiza had been expecting this from the moment Ronny had said, _On the way_ , but he’d meant it when he said he hadn’t been expecting ‘guests’. Or rather, he hadn’t expected Ronny to arrive so soon following their phone call. He sucked in a breath, and asked a question of his own: “Hold on, Ronny. What of the others?”

Ronny’s expression turned petulant for the briefest of seconds. “I said I’d tell you on the way, didn’t I?”

“You did,” Maiza agreed. The words felt slow and thick as he said them, deadened by thirst and leaden as his legs. He fought the urge to sink back into the chair he had so readily abandoned. “Humor me.”

Though Ronny narrowed his eyes, his reply was neither put out nor exasperated; he simply shrugged, and answered as bid. “As we speak, Firo and the rest are teaching some of the would-be attackers a lesson I expect they won’t forget. As for the manager and his crew…” He paused. Ran his tongue over the tips of his teeth, lips curling back with conceited gratification. “Well, no matter.”

In other words, Ronny must have ‘taken care’ of the manager’s crew himself. Maiza thought back to the manager’s hauteur and sighed. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?” Not that he was accusing his friend of murder, but—the question had to be asked.

“Yes, yes, he’s alive. They’re all _alive_ ,” Ronny replied, and the slight tinge of impatient dismissal in his tone and wave of his hand only made Maiza more suspicious. Alive, he had no doubt, but in what fashion? “They’ll make a full recovery,” insisted Ronny, and then– “But I can tell you all about it _on the way_.”

Ah. So that was it, after all. A sudden swell of fondness for his old friend swept through him, and he had to bite back a smile before it could betray the feeling. Ronny was impatient—but not with him, really. Ronny was impatient with the whole affair and would like to go home now, thank you very much.

 _No, that’s not it,_ Maiza amended. _He would like to return with me at his side_. His throat seized with gratitude at the new expression on Ronny’s face—while Ronny’s eyebrows were raised expectantly, his lips had taken on the faintest of sardonic upturns, as if he expected to be let down. At that, Maiza had to look away. The smile he’d suppressed before now resurfaced as an awkward, apologetic grimace.

“I’m grateful that you came,” he said, hoping that his sincerity superseded whatever ruefulness he might feel, that Ronny wouldn’t read his mind and know just how tempted he was by the offer. There was nothing more he’d like to do right now than return to the Martillos and have a long, undisturbed rest. “But… I can’t come with you. Not yet. Leskovar’s too important, and I can’t pretend I wasn’t involved.”

For the first time since Ronny’s grand entrance, Maiza looked over at Leskovar’s corpse. His hand and ankles tingled at the sight of the bone saw, but it was the residual mix of hate and fear in the corpse’s expression that caused his heart to skip a beat. “He’s one of Szilard’s men,” he explained, though Ronny surely knew it from the moment he stepped into the room—if not before. “He expected me to devour him.”

That Leskovar had all but dared him to do so went unsaid. That Maiza hadn’t devoured Leskovar didn’t _need_ to be said, but Ronny went ahead and observed the obvious in a dry, flat voice: “You didn’t.”

In fact, it was such a flat delivery that it could almost be taken for sarcastic surprise, but Maiza simply nodded and took it as nothing more than a prompting to continue. “My thought at the time was that Molsa and the rest ought to decide what’s to be done with him. Now that I have a clearer head…”

If his smile had _almost_ been a grimace before, then it was unmistakably one now. “Leskovar directly threatened the Family, that much is true, but… We can’t disappear him. He’s too well known, too well connected. The inevitable investigation would be publicized simply by way of his financial and business standings alone. But it won’t,” he added, his hands curling into fists, “if we alert Victor to the fact that he’s one of Szilard’s. At the very least, not to the degree it would otherwise, and without putting the Family at risk of public and legal scrutiny. And we _do_ have to alert him.”

Maiza stopped to dry swallow, a painful action that only served to aggravate his palate and make his thirst all the more acute. His stomach chose that moment to complain, causing him to wince; he did not need Ronny asking after his condition, or rather, an excuse to ask after it. It wasn’t that he minded Ronny knowing (knowing Ronny, he already _knew_ ), it was that he would rather Ronny not make another tempting offer that he would yet again have to refuse.

After all, his official statement for the police would be more believable the more evidence for it there was. And given his immortal condition, he needed all the evidence he could muster.

Still… He had to admit that the shrillness of his thirst and hunger continued to puzzle him. Nothing that had been done to him would explain it; the wounds themselves certainly wouldn’t, and though he had been in pain, he doubted he had sweated out enough liquid to the point of dehydration.

Ronny cleared his throat, loudly enough to make Maiza aware of the fact he had fallen silent a tad longer than he’d meant to. _Damn._ Hastily, he picked up from where he left off. “I have to give Victor some sort of statement. I know cooperating with the government is against our rules, and goodness knows I haven’t forgotten what happened in December...but it’s the only way forward.”

The safest way forward for the Family and Maiza, and a crucial step forward for Victor’s investigation into Szilard’s network. It really was the only way. Apologetic once more, and admittedly more than a little bitter, Maiza gave Ronny a resigned shrug. “I doubt Victor will hold me for too long, so…with apologies to Molsa and the rest, it seems that I’ll be kept away for a little longer.”

Ronny tucked his hands into his pockets and leveled Maiza with an inscrutable, narrow look. For several seconds, he said nothing. Then, “The Family will be disappointed to hear it. You know, you’ve been gone for over fourteen hours—would you really put me in the position of delivering such unwanted news?”

Maiza hadn’t heard the question. His mental faculties had stopped with ‘fourteen hours’, and would remain useless until further notice. “Pardon?” he managed, a beat too late. “How long did you say?”

“Fourteen hours,” Ronny repeated, adding “Six past nine” when Maiza opened his mouth to ask for the current time.

Maiza’s mouth remained open for another second as his mental faculties scrabbled to catch up, at which point he replied with a soft, “I see.”

He _did_ see. It explained everything: the incredible thirst he had experienced after first regaining consciousness; the hunger; how the odd swiftness with which the manager had coordinated an Alveare assault wasn’t swift at all. All this time, Maiza had assumed he had been unconscious for upwards of a few hours at most. It was an assumption that he now realized had no basis whatsoever; he had made it only because he had no reason to think otherwise.

The more his mind raced, the more sense it made. Of course Leskovar wouldn’t want to meet him in the middle of the night—no matter how private of a man he was, he wouldn’t risk atypical behavior at an atypical hour at an atypical location. He had made quite the show of boasting just how _careful_ he was, how _clever_ , how _circumspect_. He had said he was not so senile _as to leave tracks_ and it was here Maiza realized he had made two assumptions, not one: he had also assumed that Cormac had taken him directly to the hideout once he’d been successfully neutralized.

In light of the time and Leskovar’s personality, a new, far more likely sequence of events unfolded before him with startling speed. Cormac must not have driven straight to the hideout, because Leskovar would have never permitted such a thing in the first place. Perhaps paranoid that the car would be tailed, perhaps wanting to obfuscate his followers’ actions, he would have surely ordered Cormac and the others to take their time coming back. Throw any potential Martillo snoops off their trail by meandering about the purlieu, stopping occasionally to pick up whatever items they needed along the way.

This was where Maiza’s insight ended. He had no way of estimating how long he’d been in the automobile, nor how long Mack might have left the knife in his throat once they arrived (if Mack hadn’t immediately removed it after all). Well… No matter.

Maiza took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a soft cloth from his breast pocket, stealing a glance at Ronny’s blurry form from where it remained on the opposite side of the table. For someone who had been awfully impatient earlier, Ronny was being awfully patient with him now. Perhaps he had elected to read Maiza’s mind after all.

Which was just as well. Maiza estimated he’d been silent for less than a minute, and he didn’t plan on staying silent much longer. He hadn’t exactly had a stunning revelation; rather, he had simply been given a single piece of information that shed a new perspective on—everything. It was only natural that new information should follow, and only natural he stop to process it.

Better that he _stop processing_ before he got ahead of himself. Any more, and the Informer would recruit him as their newest information broker. Besides—he didn’t have _time_ for this. Not now that he knew just how long he’d been gone.

Frowning at his own carelessness, Maiza rubbed at the bridge of his nose, took a quick smeary survey of the room, and weighed his options. “Yesterday afternoon,” he said, as he donned his glasses, “I asked you to look after the Martillos in the event Leskovar targeted them, while I investigated my attackers head-on. From the sound of it, you’ve done just that. I’m grateful,” _relieved_ , overwhelmingly relieved that he’d changed his mind, that he’d convinced Ronny as a precaution, “but...it seems to me that the deal has yet to be fulfilled.”

He’d donned his glasses just in time to catch Ronny’s expression shift. Shift from _what_ , he didn’t know, but certainly _shifting_ , as if the lines at his mouth and brow not only had minds of their own but also were unable to make those minds _up_. In the end, they smoothened entirely.

“You’re right,” Ronny replied, much to Maiza’s surprise. “You’re the only one left.” He let his sentence hang in the air like it was the penultimate line of a play’s climactic scene—and, once the silence grew sufficiently pregnant, made a show of checking his watch.

“Eight past,” he said. “All right, Maiza. We’ll have it your way a little while longer.”

 

This, then, was how the day’s course and the fate of numerous people were decided in the span of three minutes: in a blur of collusion and underworld villainry, as plotted between two small-time camorristi in a windowless, underground room which—as far as blueprints and Victor Talbot were concerned—did not exist. As far as Victor was concerned, there was not a group of men currently hallucinating in the building opposite Alveare, and there was not a group of men currently groaning on the cobblestones next to Alveare.

Victor was having a perfectly nice morning, all things considered, and it was therefore up to Ronny to ruin it. Yes, Ronny was going to have to orchestrate a lot of people and things, it seemed, delivering strategic nudges and carefully chosen words at the exact right times and places with all the finesse of an aging chessmaster. That is to say, he was going to be manipulating the ever-loving hell out of the police. For their own benefit, of course. And undoubtedly for his own amusement; for all that he had come across as impatient, Ronny was a curious creature who usually enjoyed Situations rather than avoided them.

At the end of the third minute, Ronny consulted his watch and reached for the hat he’d laid on the table. “Eleven past,” he said. “The police are hauling young David Hayes’ group as we speak.”

There wasn’t any time left to discuss _how_ Ronny might accomplish what needed to be accomplished, but there was no one else who _could_ accomplish it full stop. Maiza had full confidence in Ronny’s abilities as it was, and saw him off with a considerably lighter heart than he’d had ten minutes before. He was sorry to see him go, true, but not as sorry as he was sure that Ronny planned on doing whatever it took to see Maiza _on his way_ home before nightfall.

Ronny halted on the tenth step from the top, palm pressed against the trapdoor. “You’ll be alone,” he said, tilting his head in Maiza’s direction. The angle made it hard to tell if he was actually looking _at_ Maiza, but Maiza peered up at him and smiled anyway.

“Yes,” he agreed—he couldn’t tell whether Ronny was referring to Maiza _now_ or when Maiza was _on his way_ , not that it mattered—“But not for long.”

**Now               The Alveare**

“I won’t bore you with the details,” Ronny assured Yaguruma, though he was still looking at Maiza out of the corner of his eye. “It was too short to be anything worth telling. Suffice it to say, it was enough to assure myself of his well-being.”

“You couldn’t have done the same for us, eh?” Yaguruma challenged. His earlier good humor had melted into a frown, which he now turned in Maiza’s direction. “He was in and out of Alveare this morning like Captain Spaulding, without so much a peep as to your whereabouts!”

Maiza, caught off-guard by the movie reference, had to struggle to keep a straight face as the notion of Groucho Marx singing, _Hello, I must be going / I cannot stay—but by the way, Maiza is a-okay_ mercilessly popped into his head. He managed to keep his expression schooled for the most part; as much as he enjoyed musing over wordplay, it troubled him more that Ronny had not done as he asked and passed his apologies onto the Martillos.

Logically it was likely the right thing for Ronny to do—to play the unsuspecting Martillo and not let on that he knew more about Maiza’s situation than he ought—and it wasn’t as if Ronny hadn’t had a schedule to keep at the time. Still, the fact that Maiza’s apologies hadn’t been passed on was a fact that troubled him. That Ronny had alluded to the meeting only served to remind him yet again of Leskovar’s fate, which further dampened his mood.

 _So what if it did_? Maiza raised the wine to his lips and drank again, chastising himself for the piffle. Ronny had every right and responsibility to be transparent, and to doubt his intentions, let alone Molsa’s and Yaguruma’s trust in him, would be as much of an insult to them as it would be self-centered. Hadn’t Molsa proven as much, back when Maiza had first joined the family?

Rather than cringe every time Ronny opened another door on his behalf, he ought to walk through the doorway with his head held high. Reproaching Ronny was all well and good, but it did not change the fact that Ronny had opened so many doors in the past that Maiza had not possessed the strength needed to push against them himself.

Maiza held his head high, meeting Yaguruma’s gaze, and then Molsa’s. “Once he learned of my situation, I expect he had to act fast,” he began, pleased that his voice remained evenly conversational. “The man after me—he was one of Szilard’s.”

Molsa’s good humor, like Yaguruma’s before him, sloughed into grim alertness at Szilard’s name. Steeling himself, Maiza continued, “The fellow he’d recruited to lead the Alveare assault had a personal grudge against me as well, which I’m afraid extended to the Family…” He hesitated, wondering how much detail he ought to give. “…I’ll tell you about him later. His employer, Miroslav Leskovar—he went after me because he and the others assumed I was the one who devoured Szilard. Because he knew I could grant him true immortality.”

He reached for his wine glass, only to change his mind and take the glass of water next to it instead. His throat felt as sandpapered as it had this morning, despite him having long since quenched his thirst, and the clear chill of the water was far more refreshing than the warm burn of the wine in his gullet.

Momentary silence fell over the table as Maiza drank, neither pronounced nor uncomfortable thanks to the steady undercurrent of noise from the other partygoers. Molsa seemed ill-inclined to break it, his expression grave and attentive as he waited for Maiza to continue. There was no telling what Ronny was thinking, since Maiza had kept his own attention firmly on Molsa and Yaguruma.

Though the latter of the two now bristled in his seat like a quivering porcupine, he seemed to be biting back a question rather than on the verge of asking it—so Maiza set down his glass, folded his hands on the table, and cleared his throat. “As a friend, I apologize that my past has once again caused the Family trouble. And as a member of the Family, I must formally apologize for leaving Leskovar in the government’s hands rather than those of the Martillos. Had I not, you would have been able to decide his fate.”

An apology that would surely be forgiven was not the same as an apology that did not need to be said, and Molsa answered it by lowering his head and arching his eyebrows, as if he were looking at Maiza over the rim of non-existent glasses. “You decided this? To let the law take him?”

 _As opposed to the law seizing him before I had a chance to intervene_. Maiza didn’t hesitate this time. “I did.”

Molsa gave a slow, ponderous nod, a smile spreading equally slowly across his face. “Then the Family has decided his fate after all. _Va bene_.”

Maiza’s skin tingled. “Sir?”

“Whether by our hands or theirs,” Molsa said, holding his right hand in front of him, and then his left, “He will die.” He clasped his hands together, elbows on the table—more prayer than plea, more applause than prayer. “His fate, decided.”

The gravitas with which Molsa spoke, weighed by age and underworld seniority, rendered Maiza unable to reply. He groped for something to say, feeling as young and inexperienced as he had when Dalton Strauss first took him under his wing over two centuries ago. It was not the first time Molsa had made him feel such a way, and Maiza doubted it would be the last.

It was, he thought, utterly fitting that Yaguruma was the one to meet Molsa at his level. “I suppose, Ronny, that it was your hand that guided the police to us after all?”

Upon finally sparing Ronny a glance, Maiza found that Ronny had straightened out of his relaxed pose into an attentive one—ever the diligent _chiamatore_. “I suppose,” Ronny replied, expression inscrutable.

Yaguruma paused, mustache twitching, and Maiza had a sneaking suspicion that he was deciding between apologizing and not apologizing for his earlier rebuke. “Well,” Yaguruma concluded, “It seems that the Martillos have decided _their_ fate, too.”

Molsa took up his glass at that—not high enough to catch the others’ attention, but high enough to be an unmistakable toast. His smile sharpened into a smirk—too lacking in vanity to be comparable to those of Ronny, but otherwise hard with dry mirth.

“ _Che peccato_ ,” he said, and the four men clinked their glasses together as one.

❖

They returned to lighter conversation in the hour that followed, each tacitly agreeing that such work-related matters would better be discussed in the morning. Even if Molsa _had_ wanted a full report from Maiza, he likely wouldn’t have gotten a satisfactory one, what with the way Maiza’s mind was fogging over. Dreams dipped his head low; he drifted through a liquor sea on a honeycomb boat with smoke-filled sails, the murmur of lost sailors and eternal flames all about him. He blinked bleary-bright at the golden wine shimmering in his glass, and fancied he was drowning in it.

“Careful,” said a voice, and a hand pulled Maiza back before his tie could fall into his own drink. He shivered and peered at Ronny, who patted his shoulder once before letting it go. “You’re rather done in. Well, no matter.”

Ronny stood and leant over the table to address Molsa and Yaguruma, while Maiza tried to figure out if he was wearing his glasses or not. He felt for the metal frames with his fingertips, and was satisfied to find them still there. “It seems Maiza and I will be taking our leave. It’s been a fine evening—Seina and the rest have outdone themselves.”

“You don’t have to leave on my account, Ronny,” Maiza protested, more weakly than he’d meant to, and Ronny slipped on his coat before offering him an arch look.

“You’re quite right,” he agreed. “I do not.”

There was nothing Maiza could say in response, and déjà vu tingled behind his ears as he stood and gathered his things. The goodbyes he murmured to Molsa and Yaguruma were heartfelt but ordinary, and he and Ronny headed for the door to the honey shop without any accompanying fanfare. Good, good. Maiza had never inherited his father’s fervor for fending off felicitations and fanfare with fanfaronades, and he had no plans on starting now.

“Maiza?”

Maiza stopped a short distance from the door—no, he had no plans for another fainting fit—and found Firo on his left, hands in pockets and more somber than he’d been all evening. Ahead of them both, Ronny retracted his hand from the doorknob and leaned against the door, apparently content to wait.

It occurred to Maiza, now that he was turning his full attention on Firo, that the two of them hadn’t had much of a chance to talk privately during the feast. Firo had been one of the first to welcome him back, true, but he’d also been one of the first to step away and give others room; Maiza had caught him sneaking glances over to the senior executives’ table in the hours since, but neither he nor Ennis actually approached them.

 _I suppose I should have a talk with him_. Hadn’t Maiza said something to Ronny along those lines, back when Firo had blanched at his bullet-ridden outfit? He regretted not reaching out to Firo when he had noticed the glances, as his senior position afforded him. They could have stepped out into the back courtyard with a few drinks and talked in the privacy of the open air, as they had done from time to time in the past.

But it was too late now for any lengthy conversation, let alone a serious one, and the resignation in Firo’s eyes suggested he knew it as well. There was—too much that needed to be said, and Maiza hadn’t yet figured out how to say any of it. There was quite a bit that he would rather not tell Firo at all: he did not _want_ to tell Firo that the manager he’d confronted as an associate had returned with a vengeance; he did not _want_ to speak of Leskovar in Firo’s presence. He had _fought_ for Firo; he had claimed Firo’s burden in his stead; everything he had done had gone toward ensuring that Firo would be kept well out of the affair.

There were too many things still left unsaid from Ra’s Lance. To talk of Leskovar was to talk of Szilard, and to talk of Szilard was to enflame old wounds and pains and baggage that had no place at parties. Perhaps it was better they hadn’t stepped out after all.

 _Tomorrow, then._ Tomorrow, tomorrow. Thus resolved, Maiza said, “Ronny and I are calling it a night, I’m afraid. Even we immortals have our limits.” He indicated the rest of the partiers with a tilt of his head. “You don’t suppose they’ll hold it against me?”

Firo shrugged, not bothering to look in their direction. “I’d bet on it, but I’m not on the clock.”

It wasn’t a bad joke, all things considered, but the air with which Firo held himself was more awkward than humorous. And then it was more hesitant than awkward, as if he didn’t know quite what he’d wanted to say—except that a joke hadn’t been it.

Maiza softened. “I heard you put on a fine performance this morning,” he said, and this was true in the direct sense; while he had not yet heard a full account of what had transpired on Alveare’s end, Yaguruma had used, “Firo’s fine performance” as an excuse for another toast earlier that evening. “I’m keen to hear more about it later—it seems I certainly missed out on a _ruckus_.”

Though Firo didn’t flush from the praise, his expression grew brighter. It wasn’t a drastic change, by any means; he hadn’t gone from dour to cartoonishly overjoyed. All it had taken was one or two worry lines vanishing, his frown relaxing, and there he was looking as youthful as he had at sixteen. “We wouldn’t have given ‘em anything less than that,” he insisted, and his frown turned more snarlish than smilish. “They oughta be grateful we didn’t give ‘em anything _more_.”

“Aha… I can imagine.” Maiza could certainly imagine all sorts of things. He _had_ imagined all sorts of things, back in the hideout–

–But it was the Firo in front of him that mattered, _this_ Firo, not the phantom his mind had conjured back then. Everything that Maiza had said about _tomorrows_ and had ever been said about _eternities_ suddenly no longer mattered, overshadowed by that same, poignant grief from before. He had thought he would have eternity to speak with and grow closer to his brother, once upon a time. He had thought–

“Firo–” He’d said the name a little too urgently, and he stopped himself. “Firo, I…”

His gaze wandered over to Ronny and the door on his right. Firo looked as well, without moving his head. “…You off then, Maiza?”

Startled, Maiza did not immediately reply. Not until Firo peeked up at him, cautiously expectant. Then, he donned his hat.

“That’s right,” he replied—to Firo, and Firo alone. “Just like always.”

“Just like always…” Firo echoed, and he broke into a boyish smile that crinkled his eyes. The confidence with which he spoke, however, was mature and very, very warm. “Right.”

❖

Maiza stepped into the cool night air and popped up his coat collar, leaving Ronny room to lock the honey shop door behind him. Across the street, Leskovar’s building stood dark and silent, with only a few curtained windows lit here and there as evidence of occupancy. He wondered whether this was deliberate on Victor’s part, whether there were agents moving behind those walls even now. There weren’t any automobiles parked outside the building, but that meant nothing.

He wondered, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good, behind which windows the manager’s men had taken aim.

“The first four windows from the left, second floor,” intoned Ronny as he came to stand at Maiza’s left side. “That’s where they holed up.” At Maiza’s even look, Ronny loosely shook his head. “No, I didn’t read your mind. I’m simply familiar with how it works, that’s all.”

 _Familiar with_ , hah… “That’s one way of putting it,” Maiza said. “You’ve had two centuries to get to know it, true…”

He trailed off. His attention was still with the building, and the windows Ronny had pointed out to him. Two of them were lit, and Maiza found himself holding his breath, found himself waiting for Victor’s silhouette even though Victor himself was surely elsewhere. Either asleep or at his desk, or asleep at his desk, perhaps. But Maiza did not exhale until Ronny spoke once more.

“Victor’s sorry about earlier, you know,” he remarked. “Or, to be more precise, he has regrets.”

“Regrets?”

“About the way he treated you, I should imagine.”

Maiza thought back to that little interrogation room, to Victor and the table between them. To Victor, who had tried to be as harsh as the electric light overhead and been keen to remind them both of their societal places; who had been abrasive and then doubly abrasive when he thought his personal feelings were slipping through the cracks (when in truth they had been on display the whole time). He thought back to Victor in December, and how Victor had openly spoken to him with warmth and affableness before spitting hellfire over his gangster ties.

“He…hit below the belt more than once,” Maiza admitted, grimacing as he recalled Victor’s comments about Firo and the Martillo ‘mafia’. “How he treats me is one thing, but if he thinks I’ll forgive him for how he treated Firo and the rest last winter, he’s sorely misguided.”

“Winter, hm…” Ronny rubbed his chin. “Are you positing his treatment of you now is opposite to what it was then?”

In truth, Maiza had already given Victor’s behavior its due consideration this morning, during the interrogation itself. “Victor is Victor, regardless of context. One might say it would have made more sense to openly appeal to our friendship in the privacy of an interrogation room rather than in the center of mob territory, but… Victor is as confident in his own security as he is dedicated to his job. He came to Alveare as an old friend first, and federal agent second. In the interrogation room, his duty was to act as a federal agent first, not friend, and I can’t fault him for that. After all—he may have come to me in December as a friend, but I met him as a Martillo.”

While he had expected Victor might be a topic of conversation upon returning to Alveare, he had assumed any talk of him would be strictly business—certainly nothing in the way of behavioral analysis. Abashed, he rubbed the back of his neck and murmured, “We all have our roles to play.”

On cue, a memory murmured back: _I’m the driver. Just the driver, you understand_. He had puzzled over Cormac all throughout Victor’s interrogation and afterward, no less baffled by Cormac’s role in his kidnapping than he had been at the start, and the memory remained as fresh on his mind as it had been then. Why provide him with the literal and metaphorical key to his escape? It seemed awfully at odds with Cormac’s previous self-declaration as an uninterested party, but that in turn had been at odds with his performative obedience.

It bothered him that he knew nothing of Cormac’s true motives, but that he knew nothing of Cormac’s—and Mack’s—whereabouts bothered him all the more. Memories lapped at his consciousness like waves upon a shore, threatening to be relived all over again, and he continued his earlier thought thoughtlessly. “No… We all _choose_ our roles to play. Cormac, Victor, Leskovar...”

The word oozed between his teeth like taffy, inexorable but nonetheless sticky with loathing. He had not intended to say Leskovar’s name. He had not been _intentionally avoiding_ saying Leskovar’s name, for that matter, not even after contemplating his building—and yet. And _yet_.

Ronny seized upon the name, shrewdness whetting his gaze with a clarity that instantly made Maiza uneasy. “Leskovar?”

The upward inflection of the last syllable was too high for it to be a true question, and instead served as a clear prompt for Maiza to elaborate. As Maiza struggled to untangle several hours’ worth of thoughts on the matter into something more coherent, he came across a loose thread that gave him pause.

“Maiza?”

The upward inflection was a clear question, this time, and Maiza answered it readily. “Nothing, nothing. Or rather, there’s nothing I can do about it now. It’s only that Victor was curious in the same vein, but we were interrupted before I could share my opinion proper. I suppose it slipped his mind by the time he rejoined me.”

If Ronny wanted more details, he knew where to find them. Now, Victor hadn’t directly asked anything remotely related to ‘roles’; in fact, he hadn’t even asked Maiza for a personal assessment of Leskovar as a person. All he’d really done was sit and complain at Maiza until Maiza had tried to appease him accordingly. So while the response Maiza now gave Ronny wasn’t exactly the one he would have given Victor, it was relatively close:

“Roles, classifications… Leskovar put a great deal of weight on making categorical distinctions. He would describe, for instance, two ‘types’ of men and have me guess which of the two was he. Above all else, he insisted he was not Szilard Quates. It was vitally important to him that I understood—that he and Szilard were different.”

“You’d think _he_ was the one with Szilard’s memories, not Firo,” said Ronny, his voice idly dry as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. However, when he withdrew one of the cigarettes, he did not immediately move to light it; instead, he stared at it, frowned, and spent the next few seconds re-pocketing the pack while the cigarette morphed into a rocks glass between his fingers. The amber liquid inside it hardly stirred.

Maiza drew his coat tighter around him while Ronny sipped his drink. His mind was as sharp as ever, it seemed. “I hadn’t thought to compare them—that’s more than apt, Ronny, I—” He stopped to scrape his thoughts together, and continued, “I told Victor before that I thought hubris was too simple an explanation for Leskovar’s downfall. If you’ll bear with me a moment—would you recall when Firo knocked over Isaac and Miria’s dominos, two years ago?”

It felt odd to phrase it as a request rather than a question, but insinuating that Ronny might be unable to recall such an event would be all manner of absurd. Ronny’s lips twitched into a smile that threatened fondness. “Go on.”

“That’s just it—Firo, like Leskovar, wanted nothing more than to be distinct from Szilard, and sought to test that distinction through his actions, not words. Ones that risked his own character reputation as much as it did hurting those he cared about. In acting like Szilard, Firo demonstrated he was nothing like him.”

Pride swelled Maiza’s chest on Firo’s behalf, but he did not pause to savor it. “Leskovar sought to prove he was not Szilard through words, not actions. He proclaimed their ambitions were different, their souls unalike, and expected me to take him at his word. What mattered was not whether they _were_ different—it was that Leskovar took himself at his own word, too.

“It’s not enough to say ‘Leskovar failed due to hubris’. He failed because he wasn’t enough _like Firo_. Had he only accepted and confronted that he _could_ be more ‘like Szilard’ than he thought—and realized that simply ‘not being Szilard’ didn't ensure he wouldn't _fail_ like Szilard—he might have been better prepared.”

Ronny’s comparison really was apt, but it disquieted him all the same. His imagination did the rest, and a fresh wave of relief that Firo had escaped Leskovar’s notice rolled through him and left his knees weak. The image of Leskovar saying _I am not Szilard Quates…. Do not conflate me with such a man_ to _Firo_ of all people was as insulting as it was contemptuous. While Maiza had no doubt Firo would have met such a statement with fire to match— _Yeah? Well, neither am I_ —the mere idea of it bordered on the offensive.

“Mm… My apologies, Maiza—I shouldn’t have pried. Not tonight.”

Maiza allowed Ronny’s voice to reel him back to reality, and found his friend scrutinizing his expression without the same shrewdness from before. The rocks glass was nowhere to be seen; a minute detail, but one that reminded Maiza of the passage of time nonetheless.

“Give it a little longer and it’ll be morning,” he quipped. They hadn’t been standing outside Alveare anywhere near long enough for that to be true, but they’d been loitering long enough for hyperbole to be more than justified. “The last time I stood on the sidewalk this long, I was taken hostage.”

He was sure he’d gotten Ronny with that one, though the humor at the corners of Ronny’s eyes and mouth vanished with a celerity that left him half-convinced he had only imagined it. The contriteness that replaced it, however, was quite real. “It’s rather tactless of me to ask now, but… If I proposed a detour before we’re homeward bound, would you feel inclined to indulge me?”

“It was your idea in the first place, Ronny,” replied Maiza, amused. “I thought I was _rather done in_ and _showing my age_.”

Ronny snapped his mouth shut, tucked both hands into his coat pockets, and averted his gaze. “Are you declining?”

“Not at all,” Maiza said, hastening to reassure him. “The night air has cleared my head a great deal. I don’t mind indulging for a little while longer.”

His mollifications seemed to do the trick; Ronny’s shoulders relaxed, and his attention flitted to a point behind Maiza’s shoulders. “It won’t be a drastic detour, I can promise you that.”

Whatever Ronny was looking at must have been ordinary, since Maiza certainly didn’t see anything _out_ of the ordinary when he turned to look. Alveare’s street intersected a larger perpendicular avenue, boasting elevated railways and shops of grander (and once more legal) caliber than Alveare. To head that way would be to head in the opposite direction of Maiza’s apartment, but—no matter.

Upon turning back, he found Ronny’s expression and stance expectant in a deliberately understated way—his eyebrows were raised, but not _too_ raised, and though his stance was wide and straight, his hands had returned to his pockets. Where the dim light filtering through the honey shop windows illuminated his right side, soft shadows wreathed the rest of him. Maiza likely matched; neither of them had, it now occurred to him, stepped outside the square patch of Alveare light that the window cast upon the pavement.

“Well, then,” he said, turning toward the main street once more. “Walk with me.”

When he felt Ronny at his side, they stepped into the Night as one.

❖

Where Maiza had taken the verbal lead, Ronny took the physical, though they walked step-in-step. Together they passed the cafeteria on Alveare’s right, cut diagonally left across the intersection and under the elevated rails, and came to a stop at the building second from the corner. Its ground floor establishment was a shop under the Martillos’ influence, as were a fair few other local businesses, but Maiza couldn’t fathom its relevance.

Unless–

“Ah, it’s nothing to do with all that,” Ronny said, distracting him from the thought. “Look up.”

 _Look…up?_ _What, again?_ Maiza peered upward and found the rest of the building similarly nondescript, its fire escape stark against the white brick exterior. Puzzled like last time, he looked back at Ronny and found him embracing the wall. No— _scaling_ the wall, pushing off a protruding ledge so that he could reach the windowsill above him.

“Come on, old man,” drawled Ronny, as he climbed another half foot _past_ the fire escape's first level. “Keep up.”

 

Maiza did more than keep up, despite his late start. Though it wasn’t a race by any means, he caught up to Ronny by the second story and enjoyed the surprise on Ronny’s face when he took notice. He even found himself holding back, clinging to windowsills and ledges a few seconds longer than necessary simply because between the two of them, he was not the one who knew where they were going.

Thus, when Ronny grabbed hold of the guardrail of the fire escape’s top platform and swung himself up and over it, Maiza did the same on the fire escape’s left side not a moment later. Somehow his hat had stayed on his head the whole time (suspiciously so), but his coat hadn’t escaped a few scuffs nor his suit more than a few wrinkles. As he rubbed his gloved palms together to scrub off the detritus before removing the gloves entirely, he watched Ronny shuck his coat—its condition as immaculate as his suit’s—and fold it into a square, which he set down on the platform’s grated floor. Then, he sat cross-legged on it and lit a cigarette.

“Care to join?”

Maiza grinned at him, fondly exasperated, and circled around the staircase entrance to do just that. Ronny leaned forward so that Maiza could slip past his back, and Maiza settled his coat and himself onto the empty patch to Ronny’s right with minimal ado. Fatigue of a new strain caught up with him; unable to lean backward without risking a fall, he allowed himself to slouch instead.

“I’m half-surprised you didn’t have me walk up the wall,” he mused, dabbing the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. “Or taken us here with but a thought. Never mind that we could have simply ascended the fire escape from the bottom level… Why take the inelegant route?”

Ronny unfastened the collar buttons of his shirt, leaning back once more with his weight on his hands. “I admit I considered it. Walking up the wall, I mean. And then,” he said, around his cigarette, “I had a whim.”

“A _whim_ ,” Maiza mimicked, suppressing a laugh. Of course. “Well, no matter.”

His impression had hit some sort of mark, as Ronny inhaled where he should have exhaled and promptly fell into a coughing fit. His cigarette obligingly hovered in space until the fit passed, after which he plucked the cigarette out of the air and jabbed it Maiza’s way. “A whim, yes,” he said, cigarette wagging between his fingers. “That was positively devilish of you, I’ll have you know.”

The tone Ronny had taken with him was one of lighthearted reproach, and Maiza couldn’t figure out whether to seriously reproach him for the pun or laugh. Before he could make up his mind, Ronny continued, “Would you believe me if I said I felt like a little exercise? Well, no–”

He caught himself, and this time the reproach in his glare Maiza’s way was more genuine. Maiza had to stifle another laugh. “Putting aside the fact that I’ve been liberal enough with my abilities for one day... The Martillos are an energetic sort, and I thought I may as well live up to the organization’s reputation. Though, I suppose one could just as easily say I was playing at being a Mask Maker. Wouldn’t you?”

Maiza’s mirth receded, muted by memories of the Mask Makers watching him from Lotto Valentino’s rooftops. He looked down at his hands in his lap, and twiddled his thumbs. “I’m not going to blink and find you wearing their mask, now, am I?”

There was a pause on Ronny’s part. “No. Would it amuse you if that were the case?”

If Maiza was certain of one thing, it was that he wouldn’t find it amusing. He wasn’t sure how he would _actually_ feel, given that he hadn’t seen the mask since the day of the _Advena Avis_ ’ departure. He’d left that behind in Lotto Valentino—but then, he’d left the Dormentaires behind, too, and they’d followed him to the New World and brought Gretto’s face with them.

Selfishly, spitefully, he had abandoned his hometown and the people he had so despised. They had come back to haunt him with spite to match, and Maiza was starting to think it was a matter of when, not if, the Mask Makers would do the same.

With his heart heavier than it had been not two minutes before, Maiza was no longer in the mood to answer Ronny’s question. Instead, he asked one of his own: “Ronny… While I appreciate your company, why did you bring me here? If it’s conversation you’re after, we could’ve had one just as easily at my apartment.”

“True,” agreed Ronny, “Didn’t we just finish discussing my propensity for whims? Well, no matter. It’s true that I’m after conversation—but I’m also after a view that your apartment doesn’t provide.”

He used his cigarette to point the way they’d come, and it took Maiza a moment to realize what Ronny meant—he meant the Alveare, or at least, what was visible of it behind the elevated railways.

Maiza stood in an attempt to better see the storefront, itself impossible to miss at such a late hour. Its illuminated ALVEARE sign did not merely countervail the night’s veil; it _pierced_ through the gloom like a lighthouse beacon beckoning ships to port. _Come in!_ it sang, _Come back!_.

It was _because_ Maiza knew what he would find if he went back, rather than in spite of that knowledge, that he couldn’t help but be a little tempted. He couldn’t help but picture the jocund merriment hidden behind Alveare’s serene exterior, and couldn’t help but feel a little better for it.

“I can see the appeal,” he said. “Seriously, Ronny, if you wanted an excuse to linger at the party, you could’ve just said so.” Well, never mind. There wasn’t much point in belaboring the point from here on; Ronny’s true intentions outside Alveare hadn’t been opaque, likely because Maiza, too, had wanted to linger. They both felt the same way, Maiza was sure, and so he decided to move the topic along. “Granted, everyone wanted the same thing. I do hope they won’t stay up all night…”

He was about to say, _And that they arrive home safe_ , but decided against it. He had a particular knack for worrying, and to continue worrying after such a pleasant feast and Ronny’s efforts to engage him would be as ungrateful as it was silly. Even if a quarter of the Martillos weren’t immortal, Leskovar’s men had been accounted for and Victor’s men were alert for any further activity.

That he didn’t have to forcibly push the feeling to the side was gratifying, and made his decision all the easier. His belief in the Martillos’ strength, and the comfortable afterglow of the feast, were stronger than his inclination towards fretting, for once, and that was all.

And so it was that the two of them slipped into a comfortable silence for a little while, borne out of centuries-old comity and several days worth of exertion. Maiza did not think of Szilard. He did not think of Leskovar. He did not think at all.

He simply _felt_ the warmth of Ronny at his side, the cold iron under his fingers and the light wind teasing them, the distant din of automobile engines, dogs, and vespertine peripatetics at once overwhelmed by a passing train’s roar that rumbled in his bones, and all the while inhaled the same smog that spattered soot and grime over brick façades and glowed up the horizon in pale orange streaks.

Maiza had, oftimes in his youth, looked upon Lotto Valentino from balconies far grander than the fire escape from which he currently surveyed Little Italy—and far farther. Where he stood now in the heart of Little Italy, his family manor had overlooked Lotto Valentino from a distance, lofty and separate from the masses as befitting their class.

On the occasions where his father had exiled him to the balcony as punishment, when he was quite young indeed, watching the city glitter below had only served to remind him of and reinforce his own loneliness. Its warmth against the surrounding dark countryside had been simultaneously inviting and out of reach, a bit more isolating than comforting; as a little boy, huddled in on himself and rubbing feeling back into his hands, he would gaze upon it and wish he were walking its streets. No matter what his father said about the common folk, the city _had_ to be better than this.

Eventually there came a time when Maiza grew old enough to sneak away and wander the streets of Lotto Valentino unescorted—but the trouble was that Maiza had grown wiser, too, and wandering the city for which he’d once yearned had only served to expose its rotten core. Where he had before imagined a private kinship and affinity with the city’s residents, he had instead uncovered a rift between them more damning and tangible than all of his father’s ridiculous class barriers combined.

As a young man, he had looked down at Lotto Valentino from his balcony with smoldering resentment that only burned hotter with each passing year: resenting that he had to _look down_ on it in the first place; resenting the city and its residents for their feigned normalcy and, in a sense, for proving his father right: these were not people with whom he ought to associate. He did regardless, of course, but he had raced through the city’s streets feeling as distant from them as he had as a boy. For a period of time, he had himself all but convinced the city was his hometown solely in name; by the time he'd starting running with the Rotten Eggs, he'd started whistling a different tune: he was a Lotto Valentinian after all, and damned like the rest of them. And even after resenting the city, he'd managed to resent the Dormentaires for what they'd done to it as he journeyed toward the Atlantic. Somehow, it felt as if his feelings toward his hometown had only grown  _more_ complicated over the years, not less.

…Somehow he’d gone from drinking in all that was Little Italy to losing himself in memories. Annoyed with himself, and suddenly aware of the silence in a way that made it no longer tenable, Maiza looked over to Ronny with his mind already scrambling for a new conversation topic–and then said nothing at all.

Stardust glimmered at the end of Ronny’s cigarette. Smoke, he supposed, fine, golden-grained smoke that unfurled in long, eddying ribbons, swirling lovely and aimless through the night air long after it ought to have faded away. Maiza wondered if it was idle amusement on Ronny’s part, and perhaps it was—at first. The more he stared, the more the smoke swooped with increasing purpose, its tendrils gradually twisting into tiny, recognizably human figures midair.

From Maiza’s vantage point, it rather seemed as if the figures were standing near Alveare itself. He watched, transfixed, as one their number twirled off and drifted northward, almost as if he were striding up Alveare’s street and out of sight. How very life-like the little man’s movements were—how detailed! Maiza was not in the habit of stroking Ronny’s ego, but he had no intentions of hiding how impressed he was by this latest parlor trick.

“It’s a remarkable illusion, Ronny,” he sighed, a little wistfully. “It looks like they’re really there.”

Ronny let out a soft laugh, its sound rippling through the smoke like a living thing. “But they _are_.”

In that moment, they _were_. The smoke trail in the little man’s wake, whilom in the air, now floated luminescent over the road and radiated the same mellow light that the cluster of men now did against the wall behind them.

When the fabric of reality blinks before one’s eyes, one is compelled to blink back. Maiza blinked thrice—one—twice—another!—but his eyes had witnessed a trick, not played one, and there was no mistaking it: the goldsmoke apparitions stood on Alveare’s street as tall and confident any human.

A skeletally thin man and an enormously fat man broke away from the group as a pair, heading for the same intersection that Ronny and Maiza had crossed earlier. They turned into the avenue too quickly for Maiza to get a good look at their faces, and in the opposite direction besides, but their outlines were all he needed to recognize them as Randy and Pezzo.

He stared after them and the smoke tracking their footsteps, but already more Martillo phantoms were going their separate ways, and already he was searching for more familiar faces. Firo, Ennis, and Annie he picked out at once, their goldsmoke eidolons flickering like candlelight, and he watched them for so long he almost missed Yaguruma and Molsa moving past his very building. Several unfamiliar figures lingered under the elevated tracks, strangers in ancient garments and ancient masks, but they vanished from sight before his thoughts could linger on them in turn.

 _They’re leaving the party_ , Maiza thought, leaning over the guardrail to better behold the sprawling city and the Martillos wending their way through its streets. Their lambent procession wove warm smoke through the city’s roads and alleys like constellations across the night sky, a sempiternal march moving ever onward toward the horizon, and the sight of New York City illuminated in his family’s warmth stole his breath away.

It is a surprisingly easy thing to cherish a place. Maiza had not known that before, not _truly_. It had been difficult to cherish Lotto Valentino from distant balconies, impossible once he learned the truth of the Lotto Valentinians, and on the nights when he could not bear to look down at the city he would look up at the stars instead. He took refuge from Szilard in cities and from cities he again took refuge in the stars, the night sky managing to be more constant a home than anything else.

It is a surprisingly easy thing to cherish a place when one cherishes its people, and the protective fondness that welled in Maiza now was just as much for Little Italy as it was for the Martillos. He had only ever wanted to abandon cities, not protect them, and as he wondered at the fierceness of his feelings, he realized—he could not remember when he last sought comfort in the stars overhead.

A laugh escaped him, so suddenly as to elicit a startled “Maiza?” from Ronny at his left, and Maiza’s smile was wry when he endeavored to explain himself:

“I just realized I have—had—more in common with Victor and Elmer than expected,” he said, not quite able to give the explanation his full attention when the city’s streets were still painted a hazy gold. How could he explain his realization when it had struck him as abruptly as it had?

He could share his memory of Elmer taking refuge in the stars on the _Advena Avis_. He could explain that in recognizing his newfound protective attitude toward the city must be the same as Victor’s, he had subsequently recognized that he wanted to protect the city _for_ the Martillos while Victor wanted to the protect the city _from_ them. He _could_ explain himself, if he so chose.

Instead, he folded his arms over the guardrail, the city’s reflection shining in his eyeglass lenses. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” murmured Ronny, as he folded his arms likewise. “I believe it is.”

“Do you think it will last as long as the Martillos?” He had asked the question as soon as it occurred to him, and knew that he would dwell on it later. For now—

“I wouldn’t know,” Ronny said, “But I should like to find out.”

Pleased, Maiza checked his watch with one hand; still a while yet until dawn. “Shall we stay a little while longer?”

“For a little while,” was Ronny’s mild reply, but Maiza heard the smile in it all the same.

He pocketed his watch, and refolded his arms. Sometimes he felt the passage of time all too keenly as an Immortal; other times, he felt it not at all. With Ronny at his side, it hardly seemed to matter. With Ronny at his side, and with Alveare and Little Italy before him, it was an easy thing—the easiest thing in the World—to smile. He smiled, and it did not surprise him in the least.

The sunrise was still hours away when they finally made their way home, but no matter; they would live to see the next sunrise, and the next, and the next, until such time as they outlasted the sun itself. For the time being, they remained content in the present that was their eternity.

For the time being, they had a family—and with that family, a home.

And for a long, long while, they were content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fanart inspired by _The Honeypot Affair_ : [Untitled](http://agallimaufryofoddments.tumblr.com/post/176152092121/clementinelemontime-reading-a-fanfic-called-the) by clementinelemontine. I discovered that artwork on July 22, 2018, exactly one year after she uploaded it on July 22, 2017. Isn't it lovely? I'm still in awe that my writing can inspire art.
> 
> A big thank you to [Elsepth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsepth) for your feedback when this chapter was a WIP, especially in regards to the cigarette smoke scene. And thank you again to all the other Discord Denizens who did the same for previous chapters.
> 
> Also: a couple tidbits in this chapter are nods to certain fanfics by Toushindai, including [The Dwarf in the Flask](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882900) (1541). If you want fics - excellent ones - that explore Ronny and Maiza's friendship, I wholeheartedly recommend hers.
> 
> \---
> 
> I often think that "comity" might be a perfect word to describe Maiza and Ronny's friendship. Had I not had a chapter title convention to keep to, I might have been tempted to use it in the chapter title... Though, this means I still have the option to use it as a fic title, ha! 
> 
> I have...thoughts on the nature and extent of Lord Avaro's treatment towards his sons, and how true our fan perception of that treatment is to Narita's perception of it. Lord Avaro had been verbally abusive in canon, but what about physical abuse? The latter is something that has come up in the works of more than one fanfic writer here, myself included, and I've been inclined to think it isn't much of a stretch. That Maiza was sometimes punished in childhood by sleeping on the balcony overnight is a personal headcanon, though, and one that's been set to appear in one of my WIPs for a while now. 
> 
> The whole 'elevated tracks' business comes from me scrutinizing screenshots of Alveare's purlieu in the anime, and I have tried to remain relatively accurate to that depiction. You would also not _believe_ how much time I spent reading up on Manhattan's elevated railways and crawling around Maps' Street View in an attempt to figure out if the anime staff had been inspired by a specific location. 
> 
> I'm afraid I don't have any color illustrations (or any original illustrations at all) for those Questions at the beginning, but then again, they're not at the beginning of the fic itself. No matter. Oh, and to anyone who hasn't: you should read Ronny's origin story. 
> 
> I've gone back and done a little editing of the previous chapters, and I might do a bit more after this goes up (em-dashes, what). Nothing significant, but it's right to alert you to the fact.  
> \---
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has commented on and shared this story; thank you to everyone who has stuck around despite the waiting periods between chapters. I've enjoyed seeing my prose change a bit over the course of the fic, enjoyed experimenting (could you tell this chapter was imagery-heavy?), enjoyed writing about the characters I love, and most of all enjoyed sharing the story with you fellows in the audience. I know I've said it before, but I constantly, _constantly,_ reread your comments and tags and cherish your sentiments always.


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